Brilliant parable explores call of the wild
Troll: A Love Story, By Johanna Sinisalo, Translated from the Finnish, by Herbert Lomas, Grove, 278 pp., paperback, $12
It's late at night. You're walking home from a botched seduction. You're a little drunk. Outside your apartment building you see a bunch of teenage punks beating up a baby troll. What do you do? You run the punks off and take the troll home, of course.
At least you do if you're Mikael, a gifted and rather impulsive young photographer. And in case you're wondering if you've misread the earlier paragraph, you haven't. That's troll, T-R-O-L-L, Felipithicus trollius, a carnivore of the cat-ape family. In the world of this novel, trolls were officially discovered and classified in 1907, they're considered an endangered species, and keeping one is illegal. So Mikael is in quite a bit of trouble -- more than you would normally be in for keeping a wild animal in your apartment.
But Mikael has more pressing worries. What do trolls eat? (It loved the guinea pigs, but he can't keep going back to the pet store to buy two new ones every day.) How do you housebreak a troll? Fortunately they don't turn to stone in the sunlight. Central heating, however, does play hell with their hibernation patterns.
Meanwhile Mikael's odd behavior starts attracting attention. His disgruntled ex, Dr. Hmlinen, a veterinarian, wonders why he's suddenly hearing from Mikael again, and why this urbane heartbreaker is full of oddly specific questions about wild animal care. Palomita, a lonely Filipino mail-order bride in Mikael's building, becomes obsessed with her handsome young neighbor, not realizing that he's gay. Neither, unfortunately, does her violent and jealous husband. And Mikael's occasional client Martes, an egotistical, unscrupulous advertising executive and the object of the botched seduction, wonders irritably why he no longer holds Mikael's exclusive attention. Fault lines crisscross this little world, and one young troll provides just enough weight to make everything crack apart.
This story unfolds in brief episodic chapters told in the voices of each character, providing glimpses of disparate but equally believable worlds: the predatory shabbiness of business negotiations, the competitive sophistication of urban gay professionals, the despairing loneliness of abused wives. All of these chapters are interspersed with information about trolls -- excerpts from fictitious reference books and news stories, sermons, folktales, even "The Kalevala" (the Finnish national epic). This background material simultaneously reinforces the realism and enhances the fantastic in this book, providing a bridge between the believable realities of the characters and the mythical animal Mikael is hiding in his apartment. Wildness may or may not be the preservation of the world, but it's an undeniable part of it. And once you let the wildness into your life, you change forever. This book is a brilliant and dark parable about the fluid boundaries between human and animal.
I should temper my praise by acknowledging that aspects of the ending seem forced, but most novels fall flat at the end, usually without providing the hours of pleasure to be found in "Troll: A Love Story." Johanna Sinisalo creates scenes that make you laugh out loud; 10 pages later you're holding your breath with anxiety. Such talent is not to be taken for granted.
It's a book I picked up with anticipation and put down with gratitude. Sinisalo is well known in her native Finland for television scripts, comic strips, and short stories. "Troll" is her first novel. Let's hope there are more to come.
