Customer Reviews

The Year of the Hare (Unesco Collection of Representative Works)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"The year of the hare", by finnish writer Arto Paasilinna, is a finger-licking good book, period! It's about a journalist who unintentionally runs over a young hare while being on an assignment. He gets out of the car to help the wounded animal, venturing into the surrounding forest and... well, doesn't come back. While attending the animal something happens in his mind and he suddenly realizes that he can't cope anymore with his life, his wife, the rhythms of modern society, his boss and everything. He therefore forswears everything in favour of a new life, with the hare as his sole companion through the small adventures he's about to experience. From a certain point of view he becomes a revolutionary because he proves that one can live happily outside society, in fact happier than ever before...
I don't necessairly share his point of view but the tale is so imbued with happy feelings and lightness that one can's help but feel touched! As for the writing, Arto Paasilinna's is extremely minimalistic, without many frills and that adds to the impression that what you're reading is in fact a modern fable :-)

The cover of the book says that The Year of the Hare is "a picaresque novel with an ecological theme". I had a general idea what picaresque means, but to be on the safe side, I decided to look the word up.

According to the Google definition service, "Picaresque" means 1) "Of or involving clever rogues or adventurers". or 2)"Of or relating to a genre of usually satiric prose fiction originating in Spain and depicting in realistic, often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social degree living by his or her wits in a corrupt society."

I think that the definition indeed sums the book up nicely, although I think that you could argue that Vatanen is not really of low social degree-- although he does become that for the sake of his hare.

In places, the Year of the Hare can become a little bit difficult to read. The Finnish politics went straight over my head as did (I suspect) much of the subtlety relating to Finnish life. Particularly at the beginning it is difficult to see where the book is going.

It is a measure of how-written the book is that despite the missing pieces I really enjoyed the read. Some absurdities are not at all cultural-specific and Paasilinna hits them quite nicely with his man and the hare.

Fans of the aforementioned Picaresque novels should like this little adventure. It has flavors of early Vonnegut and a little bit of Ionesco. Recommended for anyone with a taste for the gently absurd.

After having read a "delightful" review, in a notable newspaper, a friend read Arto Paasilinna's "The Year of the Hare" and recommended it to me. I suppose because my friends life is more structured than my own and I'm viewed as "odd". Whatever, I felt compelled to read the book and, frankly, I came away surprised that, on the back cover, the story is said to have similar appeal as "Watership Down" and "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". I fail to see that at all. I've read and enjoyed, immensely, both books and "Duncton Woods" as well. All three provide "similar appeal" to one another, however, not to this story. "The Year of the Hare" as written could define minimalism, it reminded me of reading a journal, or diary, of someone who came to the conclusion that his way of life wasn't working and strayed into one very odd adventure after another, all ending somewhat positively. It's, thankfully, a quick read of 194 pages and everything that happens to the protagonist, during his travels, seem an attempt by the author to exemplify and glorify the vagaries of fate. The readers patience, though, is rewarded by a nice ending.

The worst sides of the western society have been revealed. And, what makes it even more ovbious: almost 20 years before the stressful and hypercommercial way of life really took off! The Year Of The Hare is a story about escape. It is allso a very truthful description of Finland, and it's people. Being one of the politically most "incorrect" books, it plays around with the posibility of revolution, wich made it forbidden in some socialist countries ( as far as I know...). Ther it is, the western way of life, summed up, pretty completely.

This book is so hilarious and I recomend this book to everybody, who wants to have a good laughs and likes good literature

All the little jokes and "finnish"-isms' don't really translate that well,but you will definately get the idea!!Book was also made to a movie,which(suprise,suprise)doesn't flatten the book at all!!Take it with you to the metro and forget about the hussle and bussle of this materialized world!(Good luck finding it..)

I checked this book out of my college library on a whim; it's not that long, but fantastically well done. It reminds me of something like Proulx's the Shipping News; written more objectively than subjectively, an account of someone's journey through a turn around from a stale life. It reads like a story from around a campfire, the events grow more and more interesting, one becomes more and more attached to the protagonist throughout (it does start a tad odd, and maybe slow, but stick with it!). I found it very inspiring, and the kind of book I could read over and over again. That's why I was trying to order it, although apparently its out of print. I recall reading on the cover that the author is a highly celebrated finnish author, and this particular novel was widely celebrated around Europe, particularly in Finland and France. Good luck finding it, and enjoy!

If you like Vonnegut, read this book. Paasilinna's humor and sarcasm are very similar to Vonnegut's. However, it is unique in that it has a distinctly Finnish touch to it. Although I have not read it in it's original Finnish text, I believe the translator, Herbert Lomas, must have done a wonderful job. I was laughing out loud in during many parts of this book.

This English translation did not come out until 1995. It is an interesting premise - a man, Vatanen, who is having a midlife crisis, nurtures a young leveret back to health, and spends the year traveling around the country with said leveret.

At times the book is quite funny, unfortunately somethings fail to translate. The translator, Herbert Lomas, no doubt did a great job, but the combination of twenty years between publication and translation, plus the challenge of translating humor makes the book less amusing than one might expect. The vocabulary choices were sometimes quite odd too. For instance one chapter is titled 'crapula.' Which comes from Latin and means very drunk. It is not a very common word in American English and sounds very much like crapola - rubbish.

Now that I have criticized it, it was selected for inclusion in UNESCO's collection of representative works.

There are also some very dark moments where Vatanen is very cruel, and others where he is treated cruelly. Knowing that it is a funny book in Finnish makes me suspect that these moments are not intended to come out as cruel and unpleasant. Despite these defects, the book is interesting and readable.

[...]

Everyone who is over 45 and works in the modern, hectic western world is dreaming of it! The opportunity to jump off and just break with the life you know and start a new one up. The main character Vaatanen suddenly gets this opportunity when he and his newspaper colleage suddely hit a baby hare with the car on a assaignement in the Finnish woods. Vaatanen gets out of the car and eventually finds the hurt hare. His colleague is by then so mad with him that he has left Vaatanen alone and driven away... This starts a long journey for Vaatanen thru a rural finnish environment. He meets a lot of people and breaks with his old life. Quit his job, divorce the wife, sell his beloved boat (everything by telephone calls) and starts taking one day at a time. The book is partly very funny and partly very "beatiful" - meaning the description of finnish people and nature and tradition. Paasilinnas short and non-descripting prose is like carved in wood. It's nothing but a very good book and I think it will surprise many readers with it's very drastic and amusing humor.