House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore  Amazon (.com) (.uk).

This is an interesting book because it is by a British author but the novel is set in pre-revolution Finland. As such the author faces the challenge of making the characters and settings both believable and accurate without bogging down the story with too much detail. So the art of storytelling the signs of a good writer are abundant here. Infact from my perspective Dunmore has managed to bring realistic characters to life as well as bring out Finnish Archetypes without them overshadowing the story. The clash of Swedish Fins and Fins through the references to nature versus civilisation for example or of the struggle between political and social world views going on at that time. This is a book that perches historically on the edge of the abyss of civil war and even later the struggle for survival of the winter war.

The novel for me dissolves a little at the end with the characters drifting off into the crowd, also the central character of Eeva is never dealt with for me fairly in this novel. Mostly she is the subject against which others characters thoughts are reflected. So this book feels like it could and should have gone in a number of different directions at the end.

However I had an ulterior motive for reading this book in that it could be added to a list of books about Finland (about Finnishness) that  allow you to understand the Finnish psyche a little better. Something Dan Hill in relation to designing for a Helsinki housing block called Method Designing. This book would slide into the required reading category in understanding Finnish politics even up to the present day as it highlights something of the route to independence that Finland took.