White Hunger
is the story of a famine which takes place in the winter of 1867 in Finland.
Central to the story are two families: Marja, her husband Juhani and children
Mataleena and Juho, a family from the farming community in the North; and Teo
and his brother Lars, both from the south of the country, both holding
important positions: Teo, a doctor, and Lars a member of government. The story
of White Hunger centres around the impact the famine had on both families.
The situation for Marja and her family is grave. Being from a poor
community, they are soon struck down by starvation. When Juhani grows sick,
Marja and her children abandon him in order to seek food and shelter in the
South. Specifically Marja is hoping to reach St. Petersburg, where she believes
food and shelter will be available. The story of their journey is one filled
with small acts of kindnesses – the generosity of those other farmers and
communities who each have little to spare but are still willing to share the
little they have with the mother and her two children. It is also a journey
fraught with danger; the danger of the cold, the relentlessness of the snow and
ice, as well as the danger from others. Marja encounters many kind people, but
also many who are angry and abusive and who will take advantage of or take out
their anger at their circumstances on the beggars that cross their path.
Consequently Marja’s journey is one of slow, relentless loss.
Meanwhile in
the South, Teo and his brother argue about the solution to the endless battle with
famine and hunger. This is a battle between Finland and the outside world,
which would seek to attach conditions to the supply of grain. Yet neither
brother goes hungry, and the battle with hunger here is a purely ideological
one. Instead a different kind of hunger consumes these people. In Teo’s case it
is alcohol and sex, as another character observes: “Booze or cunt – men get the same look with both,” Leo, however, is
consumed by his wife’s desire for a child, as well as the dire situation in the
rest of the country.
This
contrast between the fortunes of the two families is interesting. Whilst Teo
and Lars play at politics or sex from the safety of their relative wealth,
Marja and her family live out the realities of the desperate situation. Theirs
is a torturous journey, filled with loss and desperation. The cruelty of
winter, the cruelty of starvation, cold and living on the goodwill of others is
seemingly endless and there’s a sense that those who are kind will find
themselves not far behind Marja in throwing themselves on the kindness of
others. Through Matalena we come to understand both the reality of how it feels
to starve. As she describes here:
“Hunger is the kitten Willow-Lauri put in a
sack, which scratches away with its small claws, causing searing pain; then
more scratching, then more, until the kitten is exhausted and falls to the
bottom of the sack, weighing heavily there before gathering its strength and
starting a fresh struggle. You want to lift the animal out, but it scratches so
hard you dare not reach inside. You have no option but to carry the bundle to
the lake and throw it in a hole in the ice.”
White Hunger
is an interesting read. It is relentless in its presentation of famine and its
impact on the population struggling under its grip. Even so, I found this a
somewhat frustrating read. In particular, the presence of women in this book
was very much as object: object of hunger, object of abuse, object of sexual
desire. Even though the main character in the Northern family is a women, even
here she serves as an object of hunger, oppression and male desire. In
contrast, the men have thoughts and desires of their own, they play with
intellectualism even starting the novel on a game of chess whereas Marja is
rejecting the sexual advances of her husband (for fear of pregnancy). It
reminded me of that peculiar characteristic of certain Nordic crime that has to
place sexual torture of women central to the story and there’s always a
half-naked female body on a slab for our ‘titillation’. There’s also a sense
that the endless references to sex, the use of sexual language, is there to
make the story ‘edgy’, a cheap trick which the novel did not need and, somehow,
did not add anything.
That quibble
aside, this short story of a country’s battle against hunger makes for an
interesting, quick read. There is much beauty in the language, despite the
bleakness of the snowy landscape against which it is set, and whilst it is a
tale of desolation and loss in the end there remains hope for a brighter
future. It is not an easy read, not entertaining in the traditional sense, but
if you are interested in stories of endurance this could be a good read for
you. For me, I am still torn. There is
much of interest and merit in this story, but it was slightly spoiled by the
lazy cliché of woman as object, and I’d have liked it if Ollikainen had given
Marja more of a voice and a presence beyond the physical.
With thanks to Peirene Press for the review
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