Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo.

I found this a hard book to review, as it has elements I both love and hate. It is an updating or retelling of the Finnish Troll legends, where a troll enters the life of a young gay photographer in Helsinki. The troll comes from a past/parallel Finland of uncivilised pure nature and we can read the troll as the beast in us or the possibility of nature someday reclaiming us!

I like are the structure which is both new and ambitious. Chapter headings are the names of the characters narrating first person, and the narration is broken up by other elements such as faux newspaper reports and poems and website references etc. This element of the book is its most successful and I think its quite a direct and interesting way to tell a story and include some background information, legend and suspense.

Unfortunately the excepts are the highlight and the telling and style of the main story I find quite weak and light compared to the subject matter. There is no sense of gathering doom or tension, just some events strung together. The main story doesn’t match up to the ambition of the subtext. It could have been alot better and the feeling I was left with was a missed chance.