I'm still trying to decide what the main theme of this book is to be honest. I found that, for me, it was all a little vague. At first it reads as a thriller: a man is on a rooftop in downtown Helsinki and begins to fire on the people below. Then I thought maybe it was more of the 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' type of book - moving to the mother Laura's point of view and learning through her thoughts that the son, Aslak, has not been quite right since childhood. Then we're whisked away to Mogadishu where sister Aava works for a charity.
The novel is set in the near future - around 2030 I worked out from a reference that comes later in the book. Laura lectures on climate change and this helps to explain Aslak's motivation - he is part of a group that wants to show that the human race is driving itself to extinction. It's an interesting idea but I felt that it was presented in a very dry way. I didn't buy into Aslak's indoctrination - having read Kamila Shamsie's 'Home Fire' which portrays the recruitment of a young British man into ISIS, I didn't get anything close to understanding why Aslak goes into such a situation blindly. A vague reference to mental health didn't cut it for me.
I would have liked to feel more sympathy for all of the characters. All three were written as rather cold and I couldn't bring myself to care for them at all. And I wasn't interested in Aava's chapters at all - I felt they brought little to the rest of the book. I was disappointed - the opening chapters held such potential but as it went on I found my attention waning.
The novel is set in the near future - around 2030 I worked out from a reference that comes later in the book. Laura lectures on climate change and this helps to explain Aslak's motivation - he is part of a group that wants to show that the human race is driving itself to extinction. It's an interesting idea but I felt that it was presented in a very dry way. I didn't buy into Aslak's indoctrination - having read Kamila Shamsie's 'Home Fire' which portrays the recruitment of a young British man into ISIS, I didn't get anything close to understanding why Aslak goes into such a situation blindly. A vague reference to mental health didn't cut it for me.
I would have liked to feel more sympathy for all of the characters. All three were written as rather cold and I couldn't bring myself to care for them at all. And I wasn't interested in Aava's chapters at all - I felt they brought little to the rest of the book. I was disappointed - the opening chapters held such potential but as it went on I found my attention waning.