When I Forgot [Hardcover]

Elina Hirvonen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 8, 2007

This is an astonishingly assured and compelling debut novel about the love siblings have for each other, the past they share and the painful memories that shape their lives for ever.This title is intended for readers of Andrea Ashworth, Maggie O'Farrell, Ali Smith, Kate Atkinson and Vendela Vida.Anna is on her way to the hospital where her brother has been sectioned when she falters, and in that pause her world splinters for the reader into a blazing display of memory and madness, of childhood security treasured and shattered, and of families blighted by psychological trauma - her brother's and that of her boyfriend's father, a Vietnam Vet. But, in Elina Hirvonen's skilful hands, the grimness is illuminated by firecracker insight and flashes of surprising beauty. And, above all, there is hope.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Potent, fragile and tender, When I Forgot is really the story of ‘When I Remembered,’ of a woman summoning the courage to unlock her memories and share them, and feeling the relief of exhaling breath held too long.”
Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review (cover)

Recommended Reading: The story of two young people, one Finnish and one American, each with their own tragic pasts, and their journey together to understanding.—San Francisco Chronicle

"Excellent and evocative...What is most remarkable about this novel, aside from its honest, simple prose and compelling storyline (it's difficult to stop reading), is that Hirvonen maintains a real sense of optimism throughout this meditation on love and war."—Katja Pantzar, The Globe and Mail

"When I Forgot is tightly structured and coolly narrated, with a dispassionate voice that makes its extremes of emotion that much more affecting." —Alison Hallett, Portland Mercury

"The problem with Elina Hirvonen’s When I Forgot is finding a place to stop. The narrative of this slender, lightning-fast Finnish novel, the most internationally successful debut novel in Finnish history, propels you along without the hint of a stopping point, one startling, violent or surprising scene feeding directly into another, or story within story unfolding accordion-style, part now, part later, with fragments of other stories unraveling in between."—Booklist's Book Group Buzz

"[Hirvonen] captures this struggle and the role of memory in our lives with amazing grace and a crispness, or maybe an electrical current, that jumps off the page...the story is an amazingly quick and powerful read; it pulls you forward and flows almost naturally. This comes from the way Hirvonen seems to have so perfectly captured the way our memories and thoughts flow...It is an example of humane literature; language that both captures something about what it means to be human while at the same time illustrating the incredible creativity and skill that writers can bring to that quitesential human habit: the story." —Kevin Holtsberry, Collected Miscellany

A story told in sparse language and delicate sentence fragments, set amid the snow-spattered cafes and apartments of Helsinki, When I Forgot shares its philosophical commentary while never neglecting its individual characters or its unique setting.—Synchronized Chaos

"An amazing, intense, lyrical account of two parallel lives and their wonderful love affair. The swift clarity of the prose, the beauty of the images, and the wise observations make this novella a fantastic pleasure."—Josip Novakovich, author of April Fool's Day

"Terribly sad but also absolutely beautiful." —NOW Magazine

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

ELINA HIRVONEN is 30 years old and this is her first novel. She is a celebrity in Finland, where she has previously been a TV presenter and chat show host. She has just finished her first documentary, which focuses on African migration to Europe. She is a passionate traveller and has journeyed independently through thirty different countries.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Portobello Books (November 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1846270944
• ISBN-13: 978-1846270949
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,037,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elina Hirvonen (born 1975) is a Finnish writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker.

Hirvonen's first novel Etta Han Muistaisi Saman (When I Forgot) was first published in Finland in 2005 and the English translation was published by Tin House Books in 2009. Her first documentary feature film, Paradise: Three journeys in this world, is about migration from Africa to Europe. It premiered in Helsinki in 2007, and has won several awards in international festivals around the world.

She has been working as a host, journalist and producer for current affairs TV shows, and as an editor in chief for a feminist magazine Tulva ("The Flood").

Filmography:

Three Wishes, documentary film, director and scriptwriter, 2003

Paradise - Three Journeys in This World, documentary film, director, scriptwriter and producer, 2007

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A simply beautiful book, May 13, 2009

By 

C. Cambareri "loozermama" (ny) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: When I Forgot (Paperback)

This small translated-from the Finnish book was simply beautiful. The microcosm of a family dealing w mental illness, while the world deals w the madness of 9/11. As an American, I tend to think 9/11 happened to "us", however this book desrcibes how everyone world wide was affected. The translator did a wonderful job in keeping the beauty and emotion intact. It is a beatifully written book about a sad subject, but written from the heart. The characters were described with such intensity, that I could actually see what they looked and smelled like.(you will understand this after reading) To say this book was about "a brother-sister relationship" misses the more global theme presented by the author. I was moved to tears by the description of Ian being confronted as "a war-monger" simply because he was an American. The conflicting emotions he felt while living in a foreign land during an American crisis, while disagreeing with his President- all in the context of a father ruined by Viet Nam...wow! Just a beautiful, beautiful book by an amazing writer. Don't miss the more global theme when reading it!!!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fractured Lives, July 21, 2009

By 

Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: When I Forgot (Paperback)

Critics seem to have praised this slim little novel extravagantly, using words like "potent, fragile, and tender" (NY Times); they also say that its fractured style and theme of mental breakdown perfectly fits the post-9/11 world. Well yes, but I found it a mess of a book in which a number of broken or fragile lives are somewhat arbitrarily brought together in a narrative that makes wild jumps between place, character, and period. This is due to the example of what appears to be Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS, which the heroine Anna (a Finnish reporter and part-time student, or vice-versa) has received as a gift from her visiting American professor and now lover, Ian Brown. Ian is an expert on Virginia Woolf (whose suicide is mentioned repeatedly); his father went mad after serving in Vietnam and is now hospitalized. Anna is the self-doubting daughter of a pastor with anger-management issues, and she has an elder brother also in mental hospital. Flashbacks, memories, and shared stories climax (for no particularly good reason) in a Helsinki demonstration protesting America's involvement in Iraq.

Virginia Woolf is fashionable just now as a referent; the psychological trauma of 9/11 is only just now beginning to be explored in fiction; and the Vietnam War indeed scarred an entire generation -- a legacy that might well be equalled by that of Iraq. But you can't just throw so many hot topics together and assume they will work. Had Hirvonen had the iron control of Michael Cunningham, the example of THE HOURS might have counted for more, but mental disintegration makes a poor organizing principle. She rightly praises Woolf's ability to portray her characters from the inside, but she can do this herself only by fits and starts. And the best books on the post-9/11 mindset, at least so far -- novels like Joseph O'Neill's NETHERLAND and Don DeLillo's FALLING MAN -- approach the topic far more subtly. While I give credit to Elina Hirvonen for tackling painful themes (and the character of the psychotic brother has the ring of personal truth), I would like to see her develop a less scattershot method of handling them.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Confusing, narcissistic, and overwrought, June 16, 2009

By 

A thoughtful fellow "Bruce" (California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: When I Forgot (Paperback)

First, a disclosure: I stopped reading the book on page 155 (out of 180 pages). The Virginia Wolff-like attempt at stream of consciousness writing didn't work. The intentional jumps from real-time event to flashbacks were written without transition causing me confusion and disorientation. The self-indulgent and overwrought focus of the narrator, Anna, about her past and present with Joona, her mentally ill brother, and her family were wrenching, as the front cover book review quote says, but it was all too much of the same thing. A family, and narrator, unable to cope with, and come to terms with, the unreachable son and brother.

Anna's boyfriend, Ian, an American literature professor, in Finland lecturing a class of Anna's, has his own traumatic family history, including the father unable to deal with his Vietnam experience. Ian also has his personal emotional traumas from childhood unresolved, but which come to the surface during his time with Anna.

The connection in the book, the 155 out of 180 pages I read, with the terrible events of 9/11 are cursory for this reader. I wasn't able to see how that day, and the days following, had any relationship with the rest of the story.

I didn't want to deal with Anna, her familial tragedies, nor Ian and his dysfunctional family any more.

I greatly looked forward to reading this book, but, as you can tell, I found little, if any, of what the other reviewers discovered and enjoyed about this pitiful, confusing, narcissistic and tragic story.