Very disappointing. This had the potential to be a very black farce, or a heartbreaking tragedy, and it is neither. The author doesn't seem to know how to get real emotion out of his premise: at the beginning of the novel, the narrator has just been told by his doctor that the vague, distressing symptoms he's been suffering for some weeks are the result of poisoning, and he has possibly only days to live. Tuomainen struggles with both the existential horror of his character's situation, and the physical practicalities -- it's as if he had a little alarm clock on his desk, as he wrote, which went off every few hundred words to remind him to have his character either lament his imminent death, or suffer some random physical symptoms. Or both. Just so the reader doesn't forget that he's dying, and all. It all feels as authentic as a 3-Euro note ...
One star for two scenes of very sudden and unexpected black farce, [SPOILER] in which two characters meet very sticky ends. If the whole book had managed to maintain that tone, this would have been a little gem.
One star for two scenes of very sudden and unexpected black farce, [SPOILER] in which two characters meet very sticky ends. If the whole book had managed to maintain that tone, this would have been a little gem.
