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A fragmentary sequel to an autobiographical story, the novel opens with two versions of one writer facing each other across thirty-two years, divided by a distance not easily bridged. The younger, a would-be author, fights her way out of the certainties she was taught by her family and her teachers and wants to test every one of them. Moving between her schooldays and the parts she has played in later life, the narrator asks how a person assembles a self, and the craft of art, cutting and joining sentences to capture pieces of the real, is never far away.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

252 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Finland

First published

2000 by WSOY

Author's age

51 when first published

ISBN

9789510254233 (original)

9781949641806 (Two Lines Press, United States)

9780241730072 (Penguin Classics, United Kingdom)