Tainaron is the first book I’ve read by Leena Krohn, a Finnish author. The book is subtitled ‘Mail From Another City’ (_Postia Toisesta Kaupungista_ in Finnish) and is a collection of thirty fantastic letters written by a visitor to the city of Tainaron. Accordingly, it is not a large book, only 124 pages, and 15 or so of those are illustrations.
The punchline here, as it were, is that Tainaron’s inhabitants are not human. In fact they’re not even mammals, they’re insects. Furthermore, Tainaron’s inhabitants aside, is itself a fantastic place. Through the letters we are given glimpses of the city’s strange history and constant mutability.
However, the letters’ main intent, I think, is to convey the writer’s condition of being isolated (albeit willingly) in such a strange place: how she deals with the alien culture, the odd and sometimes dangerous situations she finds herself in, as well as her loneliness and homesickness.
The poignancy of the letters is further underscored by the fact that she never recieves a reply from the person to whom she is writing. As the reader, I could not help but experience the letters as being addressed to me, and I being poor at returning correspondence myself, I could not help but feel a twinge of guilt from time to time.
My only complaints about the book were a somewhat high incidents of typographical errors and a couple of odd translations here and there. The letters themselves are wonderful and convey the circumstance of their writer effectively.
If you choose to read this book (and I definitely recommend it!), I suggest reading it letter by letter. Don’t sit down and plow through it all in one day, and, conversely, don’t break the letters up by setting the book down in the middle of one.
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