Popular Music from Vittula

Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: After reading the original and trying to share it with my non-Swedish speaking friends, I am delighted to see that it now exists translated into English.
This book is down-right hillarious while also offering an inspired insight into a culture that is, still today, very much a part of northern Sweden. Also, the author's style is refreshing; Niemi's vocabulary is rich and vivid.
Indeed, a must read for any reader--regardless of nationality.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Hilarious
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Well written and entertaining
Review: I was sorry to reach the end -- I will miss the narrator and his quirky town, relatives, friends and neighbors. The story moves smoothly from reality to fantasy and back. It's honest, touching, and subtly funny. My recommendation -- read this book!

Rating:
Summary: Episodic Swedish Coming-of-Age Story
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Very Sweet Coming of Age Novel
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Very Sweet Coming of Age Novel
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Absurd and the Sublime
Review: This book is incredibly funny! The opening chapter must be one of the most striking in the history of the novel. Just imagine the main character, on a spiritual trek through the Nepal mountains. He kneels down to reverently kiss a metal plaque with budhist prayer script (he assumes), and promptly freezes his tongue to the metal. There he is, stuck with his rear poised upward, and the experience triggers, Proust-like, a rememberance of having got his tongue attached freezing metal in the far north of Tornedalen, Sweden as a small, disadvantaged working class child. What to do, one asks? Well, in Tornedalen they don't raise no wimps. He decides, very non-spiritually, that in order to save his sorry Finn rear from certain death of exposure, he is going to have to thaw his tongue, and the only solution seems to be to urinate (on all fours) in his drinking cup and... pour it over his tongue!!! And from there it takes off. The novel continues with a hilarious, sad, poignant, and very REAL story about his young man's life up until the point of "Nepalese arrest", and it is always, ALWAYS funny! And how about THAT for an opening chapter!!

Rating:
Summary: Funny, absurb, incredible
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet, funny, beautiful
Review: 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.