Lowest Common Denominator

Saisio (The Red Book of Farewells) chronicles her unconventional protagonist’s coming-of-age and literary blossoming in this appealing work of autofiction. The narrator, a writer and mother in her 40s who’s also named Pirkko, is driven to reflect on her early years by the decline of her elderly father. She remembers idyllic summers at her grandparents’ house in a remote Finnish village and the ups and downs of her childhood in Helskini, where she was raised by a caring, theater-loving mother and a cold communist father. Her father’s politics are not the only thing that sets her apart from other children: what makes Pirkko particularly different is her desire to be a boy. Saisio beautifully captures the wonder and horror that can coexist in a child’s imagination: when a restaurant near her grandparents’ house burns down, Pirkko believes she has willed it to happen and that as a result her mother will exchange her for another baby. Eventually, Pirkko finds in literature the space to explore conflicts of class and gender (“Everything that exists in the world is waiting for me to capture it in books”). Readers will be grateful to share in Pirkko’s discoveries. (Nov.)