Wednesday, April 21, 2004



Troll, but not the message board variety: I don't usually write about prose fiction, but this blog already has gone to hell today with entries on movies, television, toys and the euro, so I might as well throw this into the mix. The April 12 issue of Publishers Weekly contains a review of Troll: A Love Story, by Johanna Sinisalo. It apparently comes out in May, but I find it listed at Amazon and other places, so I don't know. At any rate, it sounds delightfully bizarre. I must have it:

"A young Finnish photographer makes a pet of an orphaned troll in this strange, sexually charged contemporary folk tale, a hit in Europe. Mikael, nicknamed Angel for his stunning blonde good looks, finds the troll behind some dustbins after a night of drinking, and feels compelled to bring it home ('It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen... I know straight away that I want it'). The troll is small and black, thoroughly wild but also oddly human, with an overpowering, arousing juniper-berry smell. ... Sinisalo's elastic prose is at once lyrical and matter-of-fact, but this is not a comfortable novel. The troll brings out Angel's animal instincts, representing all the seduction and violence of the natural world. As the troll becomes ever more unmanageable, the sense of doom grows; the ferocious ending is thoroughly unsettling."

See? I must have this.