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Popular Music from Vittula tells the fantastical story of a young boy's unordinary existence, peopled by a visiting African priest, a witch in the heart of the forest, cousins from Missouri, an old Nazi, a beautiful girl with a black Volvo, silent men and tough women, a champion-bicyclist music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand--and, not least, on a shiny vinyl disk, the Beatles. The story unfolds in sweltering wood saunas, amidst chain thrashings and gang warfare, learning to play the guitar in the garage, over a traditional wedding meal, on the way to China, during drinking competitions, while learning secret languages, playing ice hockey surrounded by snow drifts, outsmarting mice, discovering girls, staging a first rock concert, peeing in the snow, skiing under a sparkling midnight sky. In the manner of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, Mikael Niemi tells a story of a rural Sweden at once foreign and familiar, as a magical childhood slowly fades with the seasons into adult reality.
Henrik_Madsen: To små fine bøger, der handler om drenge, musik, piger og det at vokse op i udkanten af den vestlige verden. Populærmusik fra Vittula er sjovest og bedst, hvis du vil nøjes med en af dem.
This book contains some really racist language. It’s totally unnecessary. The author was born in 1959, so I don’t think his age is any excuse. The book was published in Swedish in 2000 and the English translation published in 2003, so I’m really surprised it wasn’t taken out.
Apart from that, it was a bit of an insight into growing up in a very cold and remote place. ( )
I first read it back in 2005/2006. Now, 15 years later, it was almost like reading a new book to me in terms that I did not remember much of the stories, but my overall impression, I think, is the same. I really liked it, the storytelling is vivid. There are places when dreams, nightmares, and tales mingle with the reality. Pajala is very authentic with their hard-working and hard-drinking men who are afraid to be knapsu (unmanly) and strong women who not only need to deal with all the household jobs, but also with their men. The Northern nostalgia is very peculiar and I share it to some extent as I also grew up in Northern Europe. The descriptions of cold, snow, ice in winter or midnight sun, calm evenings, mosquitos in summer also make me nostalgic. However, I believe a bit got lost in the English translation (I still own a copy in Swedish, which I might attempt to read later) and not understanding the Tornedalen Finnish. If I were from Northern Sweden, I would probably give it all five stars.
For me, the rock'n'roll music played a supporting role in the novel. It is more a coming-of-age story and an ethnographic tale of the Torne valley. The best stories were about the gruesome summer job, Niila's grandmother's funeral, and actually all the descriptions of social gatherings featuring lots of shnapps and moonshine. ( )
Mostly good, with some extremely good passages, but unfortunately has a few very weak ones as well. In particular, while the exaggerations of reality are hilarious, the 'magic realism' is rather incongruous. ( )
Difficult to say whether I liked the book or not. There are some magnificient chapters with well-described situations and characters that I really enjoyed reading, and yet I found some parts of the book very weird. According to most reviews, this book was supposed to be funny and touching, but I somehow missed that. ( )
i really wanted to love this book since I like Scandinavien books, but I could not connect to the characters. The writing style kept me going half why but then I just was not interested anymore. I might look up other books by him, but this story was just not for me. ( )
Popular Music from Vittula tells the fantastical story of a young boy's unordinary existence, peopled by a visiting African priest, a witch in the heart of the forest, cousins from Missouri, an old Nazi, a beautiful girl with a black Volvo, silent men and tough women, a champion-bicyclist music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand--and, not least, on a shiny vinyl disk, the Beatles. The story unfolds in sweltering wood saunas, amidst chain thrashings and gang warfare, learning to play the guitar in the garage, over a traditional wedding meal, on the way to China, during drinking competitions, while learning secret languages, playing ice hockey surrounded by snow drifts, outsmarting mice, discovering girls, staging a first rock concert, peeing in the snow, skiing under a sparkling midnight sky. In the manner of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, Mikael Niemi tells a story of a rural Sweden at once foreign and familiar, as a magical childhood slowly fades with the seasons into adult reality.
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Apart from that, it was a bit of an insight into growing up in a very cold and remote place. (