Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.

Kuningattaren viitta ja muita kiperiä kysymyksiä
[The Queen’s cloak and other knotty issues]
Kuvitus [Ill. by]: Virpi Talvitie
Helsinki: Tammi, 2011. 71 p.
ISBN 978-951-31-6252-8
€ 20.60, hardback

The style of Maria Vuorio’s books demands quiet concentration – but you could get quite hooked on their slow, thoughtful, gentle story-telling. Vuorio carries on the tradition of classic animal fables, following in the footsteps of Hans Christian Andersen, but with a personal twist. She is masterful in describing different emotional states – whether evoking the inner lives of humans or of anthropomorphised animals. Her stories and fairy tales hand the reader a magnifying glass that brings into view even the smallest, most insignificant creature or thing. The entire universe is present in the stories, for example when an earthworm ponders the meaning of life, a bear breaks into the National Museum, or a noxious insect imperils cultural exchange between Finland and Denmark. Talvitie has drawn an allegorical picture for each tale.
Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah