Tulitodistaja by Lars Kepler

Tulitodistaja, or "The Fire Witness", is a straightforward detective novel from a pair of Swedes behind the pen-name Lars Kepler. And wow, it's been such a long time since I read a detective novel (in Finnish we call them "dekkari" with some affection), and an even longer time since I read one in English. Tulitodistaja was a brief encounter that evoked some excitement, some disgust, some disbelief and some boredom. Its not a bad book, but the way it plays off of almost all cliches now associated with the Scandinavian thriller. There is the dive into an icy river, the attack on an abandoned train warehouse and the tragic violence of older men on younger girls.

The writing is dense and professional, with short paragraphs and shorter sentences. But Kepler (or the "Keplers") make the cardinal error of thinking that a back story is the same as character development. All of the players here are one dimensional takes on what should feel like a dynamic study of human emotion in a suddenly changed world. Most characters are given peculiar traits that make them distinct from one another, just witness the orphanage girls shout at each other. But none of them are properly grounded at any point in the narrative. Most of these girls have one defining trait each, be it anger, denial or squeamishness. The same is true of the protagonist Joona, who is mostly defined by his background. Apart from losing his family, he has precious little actual personality.

So perhaps Tulitodistaja is gripping, at least for the first 200 pages, but it lacks any true depth. At least it is honest with itself; The Keplers' creation is not an accident and their prose is imbued with all the necessary gut wrenching moments that are needed to create a national (or even international) bestseller. I won't go as far as recommend something different to read, the typical audience for this type of literature is not very familiar. However, if you are like me, pick up something genuinely haunting, perhaps The Goldfinch.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those rare books for me that I can go back to and always find an old friend. I've read Slaughterhouse-Five three times (including this one) and I've somehow been able to find new meaning and metaphor each time. It's a classic in every measure, but for those who are unfamiliar with Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five will more likely baffle on the first read through. It's short. There are elements of metafiction and sci-fi. The narrator is purportedly Vonnegut himself, but proves to be highly unreliable. Slaughterhouse-Five masquerades as a World War II novel, but is something else entirely.

I can't accurately pinpoint the first time I read Slaughterhouse-Five, but it must have been some five years ago. I didn't know what to expect and was inspired by the first half and dispirited (a little) by the second. The prologue is a master study of metafiction in itself, and if I was a grade school English teacher, I would use it as an example of a great short story. Latter parts of the novel are slightly perplexing. Despite its brevity, Vonnegut packed the novel with different and intersecting plot lines. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time - and Vonnegut bobs around, sometimes switching time lines between paragraphs.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a house divided. On one hand, its the tragic story of the bombing of Dresden, during the closing days of World War II. Vonnegut uses his personal experiences to paint a realistic picture of surviving as a prisoner of war. On the other, it's a jumbled sci-fi story of traveling through time into different moments of your life. Billy Pilgrim's self confessed time travel also works as a metaphor for the struggle to create meaning in a post-war world. Black humor simultaneuously perpetuates and hides the narrator's struggle to understand how people not unlike him could consider the death of innocents - in the Dresden bombing and the ensuing firestorm - a succesful operation.