Customer Reviews

Popular Music from Vittula: A Novel

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When Matti's lips freeze onto a rock on top of the Shangri La Pass in Nepal, he has to use his own warm urine to free them before he can tell the story of his youth. This hilarious event sets the tone for this remarkable book.

Matti grows up in Vittula (freely translated as "Cunt-village"), a neighbourhood in a small town in northern Sweden. Life consists of short, warm summers and long, cold and dark winters and is filled with grown-ups filling themselves with moonshine alcohol. When they are drunk they start to brag about the extraordinary feats performed by family members until they get unconscious from the alcohol. It is the beginning of the sixties and Matti and his friend Niila discover pop music. They build their own guitars and start practicing the songs they here on the record player of Matti's sister (with artrocious and very funny Swedish-English lyrics).

These are only a few of the host of stories that are described very vividly in this enormously funny and readable book. Regularly I burst out in laughter, which is about as good a recommendation as one can give for a book.

If you're looking for a funny and tender coming-of-age story set above the Arctic Circle, this is the book for you! It's set in Pajala, a small town in the remote Tornedalen region of Sweden, far north and near the Finnish border. The semi-autobiographical story is told through a series of twenty self-contained short stories that take Matti roughly from age 5-15 or so from the mid-'60s to mid-'70s. One is immediately given a taste of the book's style in the prologue, in which the adult Matti manages to freeze his tongue to a metal plaque atop a Nepalese mountain. He only manages to free himself (and live) by using his urine to break the bond, which then launches him into the story of his youth. The broad outlines of his experiences are similar to those of any other boy growing up in a remote place forty years ago. Life was boring and filled with hard work, some things were manly (hunting, work, fighting, hockey, eating, drinking, machines), and everything else is "women's work." If you're not good at manly things, well... at a minimum you won't fit in very well.

Of course, Matti is a little outside the mainstream, but manages to make his way with best friend Niila by his side. Where the book shines is in the the specifics of his childhood, in which wacky antics shine with humor and pathos, and magic realism rears its head every now and then. Some of the events covered include: discovering rock and roll music via the Beatles, a summer job as a mouse hunter, a raucous arm wrestling contest, an equally grueling sauna endurance contest, a sermon in Esperanto, a mind-boggling teenage drinking contest, tall tales of family prowess, a will reading degenerating into a brawl, starting a band with a cardboard guitar, the vagaries of a fundamentalist Christian sect (Laestadianism), first sexual encounters, and a BB-gun war. And let's not forget the transsexual hermit magician... All these individual parts are quite entertaining, even if they never quite add up to a complete hole. It's an amusing, and sometimes very funny look at growing up rural which would probably resonate much more with other remote cold climate dwellers than the average reader. A welcome oddball addition to the coming-of-age genre.

Note: The book was a runaway bestseller in Sweden, selling one copy for every twelve Swedes! Naturally, the book has been adapted as a film--which was co-written and directed by an Iranian who immigrated to Sweden as a teenager!

Usually, it's my husband who keeps me awake laughing at whatever book he's reading in bed. This time, it's my turn! This is the first book in years that has made me laugh out loud over and over again. Yes, it's crude in spots -- but that shouldn't surprise anyone who has spent time with teenage boys. The amusing stories are just part of the author's arsenal of techniques for conveying the sense of living on the very scary edge of reality that comes with growing up.

I'd give a special award to the translator for the freshness of the language. I put this book in a class with the works of Tom Robbins and John Barth and will be looking for more from Mikael Niemi.

I never stopped laughing while reading this funny yet tender coming of age book set in the Swedish backwater of Pajala in Tornedalen Sweden. North of the Arctic circle on the border of Finland and Sweden lies this small community of survivors in a harsh climate. In a social milieu that rewards heavy manual labor like hunting and logging, there is little room for a young man whose greatest interest is listening to and playing rock and roll music. From descriptions of his six fingered guitar playing music teacher to the limited ability of these northeners to express their feelings, this is a marvelous window on the soul of Pajala. So limited are their communication skills that most social interaction takes place in the context of manly physical contests like arm wrestling or moose hunting. These occassions are liberally lubricated with alcohol of dubious quality. Often they end in alcoholic stupors. Obviously, the dark northern winters take their toll on the residents' psyches. The narrator and main charcter, Matti, has a best fiend whose family is a member of a fundamentalist christian sect. As such Niila is even further deprived of human warmth and conversation. His family would be aghast at their son's interest in rock music. Thus, this interest is secreted in Matti's cellar where they play at being musicians with homemade semblances of instruments. Not until a new music teacher comes from skane to teach at their school do they have the advantage of real instruments. Matti and Niila assume that the music teacher plays authentic american blues because he is from Skane in southern Sweden and therefore familiar with authentic southern american music. Such is their cultural deprivation. Yet in spite of the bareness of their youth in this landscape, they maintain their interest in what the Pajala menfolk would consider women's work. That anyone in this dismal backwater could maintain an interest in the arts is a testament to the main charcter's inner strength. One wonders if this book is at least drawn in part from the author's interest and career in writing and teaching Swedish. The villagers who speak a Finish dialect view the standard Swedish taught in the school as a snob's language. Normally I don't care for translations, but this one is excellent. The only word(s) the translator confuses is "pry" and its conjugations with "prize."I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and recommend it highly. It is both technically well done and a quick, easy, enjoyable read.

This is one of those gems that would never have been published in the US unless it came in with some momentum and buzz from afar. It describes adolesence, dipping deeply into the well, stringing together a series of vignettes that are well tied together. I'm a 54-year old businessman, parts of the book were agonizing and I actually found myself squinting through my fingers in raw embarassment. The wedding chapter was tremendous.
jk

Don't be discouraged by this book's jacket, which makes it look kind of dark and serious. It's _hilarious_--as well as humane, moving, and gorgeously written/translated. I kept thinking as I read it, "Wow! Is the original this good or is the translator just really brilliant?" I think the answer has got to be both: gifted author, gifted translator. I'm planning to give a lot of copies as gifts this winter.

This book was super amazingly crazy popular in Sweden. It was widely adored, and also made into a film. The reviews of the English translation have also been glowing, and words like "luminous" were thrown around as though they cost absolutely nothing instead of 50 cents.

I feel as though I must have missed something BIG. After I looked at the reviews (I generally don't look at 'em until after I'm done with a book) I found myself paging back through the book, looking for what everybody found so wildly new and exciting.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate the book. I thought that it was a nice little coming of age story, made interesting by the theme of the impact that popular music can have in the midst of isolation. The fact that it is set in Norrbotten made it particularly interesting for me. (I actually would really like to visit Haparanda sometime, but that's a different story.)

No, my issue is that I am not really sure why there is so much to love about it. I'm not sure if it is the translation or the writing, but I find the prose kind of clunky in places-- not luminous, whatever that means. It has its moments where it gathers itself to take flight, and almost succeeds. But then I found it sank back down into more predictable sociology of the far north-- saunas and schnapps and what not.

Anyhow, I would recommend the novel, but with reservations. It was a quick smooth read, and interesting enough. Particularly if you have an interest in Swedes or Sweden, it is worth the time to read.

This novel was recommended to me by fiddler Colm O'Riain and poet Pireeni Sundaralingam, both much more cosmopolitan than I. They keep in better touch with great European writing. It's as wonderful as they said it would be, and hard to describe because Vittula is truly another world, a least as Niemi portrays it. Picture kids at the far end of nowhere trying to make out the Beatles on short wave radio and practicing on broomstick guitars. Picture winter-goofy Scandinavian men with too much to drink, too long in the sweathouse, and too little to shoot at--in a funny/weird sort of way! Really, this book will take you to place you'll remember more vividly and strangely fondly than most of the places you've actually been. Take Me With You When You GoNutty to Meet You! Dr. Peanut Book #1

Growing up anyplace isn't smooth, it isn't describable exactly. If you search your memories later, trying to ask why you did something, you can't, for the life of you, remember why. You just did it. Things happened. You tried to get to China. You mimicked the rock stars when you thought you were alone. You might even have licked cold locks---if you grew up in northern climes--- and got your tongue stuck. You were never the hero of your own legend. Well, folks, this novel captures that confusion perfectly. I've never set foot in Sweden, let alone in its far north by the Finnish border, where all the growing up takes place. But now I feel I know what it was like. Niemi's description, magical realism and all, gives you such joy, such interest, that I assure you, you will read POPULAR MUSIC IN VITTULA as quickly as you can. I haven't laughed out loud over a book so much for years. Hey, I even laughed in the Boston subway like some kind of weird, public transport cackler. But I didn't care. Kids fight in the woods with B-B guns, try to start rock bands to impress girls, experiment with sex and alcohol, get up the teacher's nose, visit scary old healers, watch the grownups pass out at huge drinkups, and dream of fast cars. In the very end, things turn out quite differently, but that's really familiar too. Most of the themes are hardly unique to the area, but it's Niemi's genius that he makes you feel it exotic and familiar at the same time. It's contemporary writing at its best and I think all readers in English owe a vote of thanks to the translator too.

You've got to have a strong stomach for a couple sections, say for example, if large piles of dead mice are not your forte. If you have ever seen Kaurismaki films like "Leningrad Cowboys Go America" or "The Man without a Past", you will recognize the same deadpan Finnish humor in Niemi's novel, whose characters are mainly from the Finnish minority in Sweden's rural north. I could recount a scene or two for the surfing reader, try to "deconstruct" whatever, go literary if I could, but your best bet would be to read the book. You will not regret it.

Poplular Music from Vittula is a very sweet coming of age novel about a boy growing up in Sweden in the 60s and 70s. It's an enjoyable read, filled with very funny episodes from Matti's life. Matti grew up in the middle of nowhere in Sweden--he remembers the first paved roads coming into his town. Matti also shares the first time he heard the Beatles and his antics in the local rock band. Niemi throws a bit of almost magical realism or mysticism in the novel. This is a charming and funny novel. Enjoy.