Kalle Päätalo: Our Daily Bread (novel)

Kalle Päätalo: Finnish novelist 11.11.1919 - 20.11.2000
Our Daily bread: novel, published in 1960

This one I got from a friend, who inherited his father's books, but had no use to them. Kalle Päätalo is pretty well known Finnish writer, who writes with plain, straight, realistis style about everyday life of  his characters. His books are highly autobiographical, especially the 'Iijoki' series which consists of 25 novels. His first series is called 'Koillismaa' ('Northeastern country') and it consists only of 5 novels. From all the authors works, only 'Northeastern Country' series has been translated into English and 'Our Daily bread' is the start of the series.

As the series name indicates, the story takes place in northeastern Finland at 1930s. The main character of the novel is a young boy named 'Kauko', living in a small cottage in a village with his mother and  three siblings  His father has died and the family struggles with welfare and hard work to get their daily bread. The incidents take place in 1930s. The main character's (and many side characters' too)  life is filled with deprivation, humiliaton, disappointments and constant threat of loosing their house to the government. There are also causes for delights though, and one them is books. The main character reads every bit of text he gets his hands on, be it newspaper, tabloid, novel or a schoolbook.

Depending on the reader's ability to emphize with the characters, the book can be described either as overwhelmingly dull or as a skillfully written story about everyday life of Finnish backwoods, with lot of lively characters in it. The author writes in very plain, straightforward, chronological style, invigorating it with dialect and sharp profiling of characters and structure of sentences.

I enjoyed the book. The lifestyle depicted in it is fascinating, I think, and the old-fashioned style of narration fits to it perfectly. It has come a cliche, how Päätalo is referred over and over again as "boring" or "cheap" or "over-detailed" or "outdated" writer. Depending from the angle of view, these opinions can even be understood, but no one can question the skill and mastery of the author. It takes nothing more than little imagination to jump into the trousers of the book's characters and then there is nothing "boring" nor "overdetailed" in this book anymore. On the contrary - the description of morning activities in a cabin, the religous and superstitious beliefs of the people of the village, the details of the life of lumberjacks, the work of police officer, priest and teacher, the knife battles in a weekend's ball and the clumsy attempts of romance of the main character - all that becomes fascinating and interesting and filled with such touch of real life that the reader totally immerses  his/herself in the story.

Blocker's Verdict: 3/5

Word of the day: invigorate = To make lively.