Monday 12 October 2009

Common language

"Finnish authors often cultivate colloquial style as an end in itself, folksiness as an excuse for engaging in something as ladylike and erudite as writing. Carlson is not concerned with this. In her beautiful literary but organically idiomatic Finnish, Kent village life comes very close to us, without unnecessary distancing effects -- this book is about a common European heritage of culture and ideas one that is, of course, also our own."

-- Pia Ingström, reviewing Kristina Carlson's new novel Mr Darwin's Gardener (Herra Darwinin puutarhuri)

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