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Alaston lukupiiri (Naked Book Club) by author Essi Kummu
Alaston Lukupiiri (Naked Book Club) book by author Essi Kummu, book cover byFelix Vallotton Getty Images

Félix Vallotton, La lecture abandonnée (1924) / Getty Images

NAKED BOOK CLUB

Alaston lukupiiri, Tammi 2023

A book club where participants undress, read, eat, drink, and indulge in abundance and sensory delights. The protagonist, Ellen, amidst velvet cushions, finds a tribe with whom she can share the wonder of existence and togetherness despite conflicts. In these moments, the tribe rests scattered about as if in eternity.

 

After publication, the novel functioned like a lamp switched on, illuminating discussions about gendered ways of reading and the valuation of female physicality in contemporary literature.

 

This conversation brought to light an increasingly open attitude towards misogyny, which continues to be normalized within the structures of literary culture. Since The Naked Book Club, new voices have risen to defend the feminine in writing, as well as to question how the politicization of feminine knowledge in literature should be engaged with and how this concept of knowledge should be handled and renewed.

"Every so often one comes across a novel that sheds light and understanding on all other literature one has read. For me, Essi Kummu's Naked Book Club was such experience, as rare as a unicorn.


I have become acquainted with the feminine principle through the life’s work of Jungian psychoanalyst Marion Woodman. In Naked Book Club the feminine principle prevails
throughout: feminine energy and its role as the building material of the universe. This isn't about gender, but about the type of energy that manifest in every individual and in our society, and we, as its parts, suppress the feminine in both men and women. The reason for this suppression is the stigma of weakness associated with feminine qualities, even though they actually require tremendous strength, especially surrender.

 

This is what Naked Reading Club tells and shows. Its structure is intuitive, flexible, and requires surrender (if one doesn't surrender, the work remains completely misunderstood). The physicality of the work is immense, and through this physicality, the strengthening of the soul. After all, the soul absorbs information from the world through bodily openings like the mouth, eyes, ears, and genitals and grows through the dialogue it holds with the senses.


I now see more clearly how feminity and masculinity intermingle in the literary universe. This is, after all, the message of Naked Book Club. Expose, reveal yourself, entwine."


–  Katja Kallio, Kirjasto-magazine

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"One of the most interesting Finnish novels of the year."  – Suomen Kuvalehti magazine

"Essi Kummu writes beautifully and uncompromisingly about delicate issues." – Kaleva newspaper

"Essi Kummu’s text is open in an unconventional way. It is as free as a person who has the courage to meet someone without self-protective filters or the mechanisms of self-representation. It is honest and without the fear of intrusive insecurities, which makes me think of Maggie Nelson’s writing." – Reader Why I Married Him – blog

GLOW

Loiste, Tammi 2020

SHORTLISTED AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2020

A brutally honest story about love, belonging and the urge to write.

The glow in your eyes and in everything we’ve had and still have. When you stand near the water, gaze at it and then get undressed. We’ve argued once again, but you don’t care; you just walk into the water after making one more decision, alone and naked. 

 

Two women fall in love. The feeling is unprecedented, overwhelming. It makes the world seem different, more beautiful. But at the same time, it forces the other into the role of narrator. She has to hide her love and feel ashamed of it, even though she has never felt anything like it before. Glow is about finding the right dress and role as an artist. It is a story about books and writing as well as reading them and about how difficult it actually is to speak up and use your own voice. It is the story of a love affair between two women, a story that is born and dies under the weight of a secret.

"Glow is just the kind of book I love; small but extravagant; a grand book. The story does not proceed chronologically but moves like a sigh or prayer. It is a touching description of the love of two women and the internalized prohibition that rises above it. … Glow is an exceptional, authentic description of a new family – about how the love between two people brings together strangers, an entire network, in good and in bad. Although northern in essence, like Liksom and Mukka, Kummu has provided a new voice and form." – Sirpa Kähkönen, author

"… [In Glow] falling in love is not confined to being lovely and beautiful; it is also depicted as distressing and scary. The two (women) in love are surrounded by children, former partners, relatives, a culture that sacralizes the nuclear family concept. The protagonist details her mental turmoil with painful objectivity. Essi Kummu has experienced falling in love with a woman who has a family. She nevertheless writes emphatic, universal prose. On the side, she draws a crude picture of the literary world, where some thrive as others try to make ends meet." – Tommi Melender, literary critic, author, Suomen Kuvalehti magazine

So Long, Boys (Hyvästi pojat) book by author Essi Kummu

"This book knocked me flat. Because it was so vividly written, it was hard to put down. I was totally hooked on it. I also wanted to read about the books the author had read and commented on inside the story." – Mari’s literary blog

"The novel is about issues of gender, looks and power. The author argues that literary publicity is gender-biased." – Kaleva newspaper

SO LONG, BOYS

Hyvästi pojat, Tammi 2017

NOMINATED FOR THE BOTHNIA PRIZE 2017

A strikingly candid portrait of a woman whose life is thrown into turmoil.

 

As the school summer holidays kick into gear, the atmosphere in the home of a writer from Northern Finland becomes charged, and not in a good way. There is one daughter who never stops talking, and another daughter who has stopped talking altogether. And then there is their mother, the writer, divorced, who wants nothing more than to be left in peace. And maybe somebody to love.

 

Yeah, right: men, and boys. There have been quite a few of them, but each has had some fundamental flaw. One is cold when she wants warmth, another is always buzzing around her; a third, well, he just doesn’t float her boat any which way. These days, intimacy with any of them somehow feels just...wrong.

Hence the writer reaches a decision: “So long, boys. It was fun.” And falls madly in love with a woman.

Written in autobiographical style, Essi Kummu’s fourth novel So Long, Boys is a delicious description of a single-parent family, teenage angst, life as an artist, and a relationship circus.

​I was not sure about So long, boys because of its genre, which is autofiction. I expected it might contain some grinchy thoughts about the meaning of art and literary work, but instead it was bursting with humor, at times very black." – Blue Bookshelf literary blog

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The Story of my Children (Lasteni tarina) book by author Essi Kummu

”The Story of My Children is a novel about a big subject. And Essi Kummu seems to tell it shockingly honestly.”   – Mervi Kantokorpi, Helsingin Sanomat newspaper

THE STORY OF MY CHILDREN

Lasteni tarina, Tammi 2014

Why shouldn’t every little girl have the right to hear the story of her birth in the way it should be told? My little girl including. It starts here.

One morning an 8-year-old daughter comes to her mother and asks her if she had been lovely as a baby. The author can’t tell her daughter the story of her birth because she doesn’t remember it. But a birth story is vital.

 

So begins a story of becoming a mother to prematurely born twins. The connection between the human seedlings, sleeping in the aquariums of the ER, and their mother begins as a frail thread. When Kummu opens up about the stage of her life ten years ago, it is hard to offer negative criticism. The milk carton-sized babies survived after resuscitations, surgeries, brain hemorrhages and other overwhelming difficulties and they become normal, bickering children. The Story of My Children goes where fathers and mothers understand each other’s anguish without regard to how happy their own early childhood was. 

The book is an intimate story of recovery. After its publishing, the book was part of a public discussion about the taboos and unspoken sides of motherhood. It expands from the question that started it all to a discourse about falling in love and whether loving is unavoidable even with the threat of losing.

Death of the Bear (Karhun kuolema) book by author Essi Kummu

"The work exudes dark light. It contains an opportunity to do and choose something totally different." – Jani Saxell, Kiiltomato magazine

Essi Kummu’s writing is so honest and bare that it is almost frightening. It has been a long time since I have read anything this real. Its fresh realism is balanced with a magical and mythical element that is powerfully primordial. I think the book will stay with me for a long time. – Kirjamieli, literary blog

DEATH OF THE BEAR

Karhun kuolema, Tammi 2010

​SHORTLISTED FOR TIILISKIVI PRIZE 2011

The bear would come to her; she would become the bear’s own and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

 

Even as a child Stella used to have conversations with the spirits, and she knew her heart belonged to just one.

 

She is the bride of a bear.

 

One day, to the terror of the villagers, the bear finally appears behind Stella’s front door. The fight between life and death begins. Death of a Bear is a story about leaving and belonging. It is an intensely sensual depiction of what it feels like to stand on the line between permissible and forbidden – and to eventually give yourself a permission to say yes instead of no.

"You can also read Death of a bear as an arctic version of the magical realism of Latin America, as a fantasy novel or as a deep-psychological story."

"Although Kummu’s novel feels archaic and is apolitical, it is nevertheless current and weirdly political. It can be read with either an ecological or a feminist emphasis."

 

"Like a folk song, the phrases resemble hymns or prayers. It reminds me of Kristina Carlson’s epical impressionism and ability to create concrete milieus without describing the wallpaper or furniture. Kummu depicts the pressure of the community and the condemnation of scapegoats."

– Jani Saxell, Kiiltomato magazine

Mania book by author Essi Kummu

MANIA

Mania, Tammi 2006

On February 22nd 1999, a Finn, Laura Virta, shoots three men and wounds a fourth at the Helsinki Shooting Club, leaving the victims with permanent injuries. When arrested, however, she cannot recall the event. Mania is a story about the shooter’s gradually returning memories during the 25 days of pretrial custody – bit by bit Laura finds her way back to what truly happened on the day of the shooting, and why.  The novel is based on true events.

In all its mundaneness the world depicted by Kummu is frighteningly true. 
– Kiiltomato magazine

 

The melancholy reality of the novel is balanced by a light and poetic narrative and will stay with you for a long time. – Marja-Riitta Vainikkala, Kaleva newspaper

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