Fiction | Anna Alanko
An intelligent, funny and tragic novel about a nuclear family that has seen its best days. The spouses try to overcome a wide range of challenges in their quest to become an ordinary family with two homes and relatively stable jobs.
(Ensimmäinen kesäpäivä) 303 pages | First published in Finnish in 2022 by Otava
I want to get rid of my husband, but at the same time I feel triumphant, knowing that our marriage is bothering my spouse’s study buddy, who wants to marry my husband since they started dating. I personally don’t think I’ll ever want to get married again, or at least I’m not in a hurry, so I can maintain this marriage just for the hassle.
10
Can the charming, incredibly easy-going, warm-hearted, and understanding man in the yellow jacket live up to the expectations? This sharp and feminist account captivates with its black humor and outrageously well drawn desperate characters. To be devoured by readers of Nina Lykke’s and Riikka Suominen’s books.
PHOTO: Niclas Mäkelä
The First Day of Summer
The couple’s relationship has plunged into a chaotic state, the wife tries to run family and professional life as usual while coping with a miscarriage, undergoing infertility treatments, and eventually bearing a distant spouse and a nauseous stomach. When the husband’s relationship with a younger fellow student is revealed, and he questions the meaning of their marriage, the spouses find themselves on the couch of an expensive but poor therapist. They wander through the full range of remedies: exhausting togetherness, opening the relationship, speechlessness, and temporary separation. During the process, they will become careless employees, self-centered friends, and bad parents. Despite the attempts nothing helps, only physical desire remains. But how many sex-toys, hotel nights and dessous does it take to save the unsavable? Does one have to stay in a relationship because of an unborn baby? And how to start a new family with an infant that would need to have both his birth parents around?
ANNA ALANKO is a sociologist from Helsinki who has tried to live in a nuclear family. She has studied writing at Kriittinen korkeakoulu. The First Day of Summer is her debut novel.
