The is the biography of a woman of northern Finland, born about 1915, who was taken very young by a much older colonel, went thru the Interwar period as a devotee of nazism, as was the colonel, lived the high life of a colonel's wife through most of WWII, then existed through a long post-war period in which their side had lost the war, finally freeing herself and taking on a new life. I found it compelling, deeply intrusive on my complacent middle class psyche, and riveting to the extent of mesmerizing. ( )

The best thing about the old days is that they’re over…But nothing is ever really gone for good.

In the last days or hours of her life, an elderly woman living in Lapland, Finland thinks back on her life; her childhood as a devout member of the “Little Lottas,” her days as a Nazi sympathizer, then married young to an older military man (a friend of her father’s), and her later years a woman—as noted in one blurb on the back cover—who has been, for most of her life, on the wrong side of history.

This story is both fascinating and often repulsive; it’s definitely addictive and strangely timely . Liskom’s protagonist is not quite likable, but she honest about who she is. By the end of the story the reader understands how one might take this path. And while unlikely a Finnish ‘everywoman’ she seems inextricably tied to what her nation is experiencing.

I admit to not knowing very much—except some generalities—about Finland or the Lapland area of Finland; or the country’ involvement in the various wars of the 20th century, so I picked the brain of my husband and occasionally made short excursions to the internet. Considering the current political climate here in the states, the choices we face every day; it’s a strangely prescient tale.

"Little by little I got my head turned around to a new point of view. I started to think that Germany had been rescued from Nazism and that the war was all the German’s fault, that it was their precious violence that had given us all these ruined cities. I felt no pity for them. Now I think that Nazism didn’t end when Hitler killed himself. I think that, given a chance, new Nazis and fascists will spring up,because that’s how people are. They keep repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. There’s loving-kindness inside all of us, but it sits side by side with cruelty, heartlessness, and indifference."

I read this book because I had enjoyed Liksom's previously translated book - Compartment No. 6. I have her "Dark Paradise" in the TBR pile. ( )