Chris reviewed Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo
None
5 stars
Finland is an interesting country. Land of a thousand lakes, highly technology-oriented, possessed of an impenetrable language not obviously related to anything else other than some of the Baltic tongues ... and also having a vibrant Science Fictional scene which at one time had extremely high-quality regular magazines ('Aikakone', 'Tahtivaelttaja') and produced the remarkable Johanna Sinisalo.
'Not before sundown' is the story of a young man - a gay photographer - who finds a feral creature and takes it home, upon which it does what such creatures in folk myth, fairy story and science fiction tend to do. The novel also contains its own background in the form of encyclopedia articles and such - after all if this is a world that contains supernatural creatures then the author has to declare herself. Does she (i) have supernatural creatures (scs for short) as part of the regular fauna and flora; or …
Finland is an interesting country. Land of a thousand lakes, highly technology-oriented, possessed of an impenetrable language not obviously related to anything else other than some of the Baltic tongues ... and also having a vibrant Science Fictional scene which at one time had extremely high-quality regular magazines ('Aikakone', 'Tahtivaelttaja') and produced the remarkable Johanna Sinisalo.
'Not before sundown' is the story of a young man - a gay photographer - who finds a feral creature and takes it home, upon which it does what such creatures in folk myth, fairy story and science fiction tend to do. The novel also contains its own background in the form of encyclopedia articles and such - after all if this is a world that contains supernatural creatures then the author has to declare herself. Does she (i) have supernatural creatures (scs for short) as part of the regular fauna and flora; or (ii) make them something very rare that nobody really believes in but which are feared anyway; or (iii) have her society still deny that they exist, and that believing in them can get you locked up or at least laughed at? "The almost extinct cat-ape"? Way To Go.
Unfortunately Science Fiction in the English-speaking countries doesn't seem to take kindly to translations or writers from outside its sphere. The literature that deals with the Outside tends towards the oddly parochial at times. People such as Brian Aldiss, Ian Watson and others have attempted to remedy this lack by attempting outreach for which the Anglosphere seems never to have rewarded them. The edition of this novel that I have was funded by the Arts Council of England, to which much thanks.
The structure of this novel as well as the aforementioned scholarly references, articles and so on, alternates between viewpoints and does this strictly - there is no omniscient narrator unless she is the one providing the reference book extracts. This is a harder act to pull off than the reader might think and if done well as it is here is rewarding.