Toiset kengät

The second of the author's novels about Antero takes him from about twelve to seventeen in 1960s Oulu. His mother is dead, and his father, a career sergeant raising five children alone, moves the family off the garrison into a street of ordinary houses and pins up a list of ten household rules. The boys discover that most people are not army families. On dark winter nights they crouch in the snow to watch a neighbour's television through the glass, and one night an explosion at the fertiliser works paints the sky in colours nobody has seen. As his body changes, Antero hankers after suede shoes and low-slung trousers, pines from afar, and slowly understands that he must become a painter, which takes him away to an art school in Savonlinna.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

367 pages in the original

Genres

Coming of age, Family, Autofiction (assigned by AI)

Set in

Finland, 1960s

First published

2007 by Otava

Author's age

56 when first published

ISBN

9789511212720 (original)

More

Wikidata