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Lowest Common Denominator (The Helsinki Trilogy, 1)
Pirkko Saisio
'Playful and profound... a captivating glimpse into twentieth-century Finland through the eyes of a charismatic child narrator. I loved it' Fiona Mozley
‘Grandma made me take lots of naps. She believed sleep was the most important thing in the world for children. And that adults should be allowed to drink their afternoon coffee in peace.’
In this charming patchwork of fever dreams and memories, Pirkko Saisio transports us to the 1950s Finland of her youth, where she navigates life as an only child of communist parents. Convinced she will grow up to become a man, a young Pirkko keeps trying and failing to meet the expectations of the adults around her. But as she discovers that she can be the narrator of her own story, it is in language that she finds a refuge and a way to be seen at last.
In a world where mascara-streaked mermaids dodge tennis balls, a beloved green cap is stolen by the Big Bad Wolf, and the first tugs of infatuation are inspired by a swimsuit-clad circus announcer, Saisio captures the heart-wrenching intensity of childhood as it floods back in the wake of her father’s death.
Deeply moving and disarmingly funny, Lowest Common Denominator is the first volume in a trilogy that has been celebrated in Finland as the best work of the century.
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About Pirkko Saisio
Reviews for Lowest Common Denominator (The Helsinki Trilogy, 1)
John Self
The Critic
Droll, sardonic... A piquant account of a childhood and a time... Saisio sketches a poignant, funny-sad picture of a communist family in Cold War Finland. In both substance and style, comparisons with Ali Smith may come to mind
Boyd Tonkin
Spectator
A brilliant book, half modernist poem and half classic comic of age novel. For anyone who ever became a writer
James Rebanks Playful and profound, Lowest Common Denominator offers a captivating glimpse into twentieth-century Finland through the eyes of a charismatic child narrator. I loved it
Fiona Mozley One of Finland's greatest living authors... Lowest Common Denominator, elegantly translated by Mia Spangenberg, is the first of her works to be published in English and the first in her Helsinki trilogy, which is in the peculiarly bleak Scandinavian tradition of autofiction
New Statesman
Like Annie Ernaux but funny
Irène Bluche
rbbKultur
This is both family history and contemporary political history, sexual self-discovery and artist biography… moving and clever, funny and beautiful
NZZ am Sonntag, Best Books of the Century
If you love Deborah Levy, you'll adore Pirkko Saisio
Le Masque et la plume
Long an object of study in Finland, Saisio’s work is beginning to gain more global recognition now, cementing her place in the canon of autofiction that also includes the Nordic writers Karl Ove Knausgaard and Tove Ditlevsen
Niina Pollari
Los Angeles Review of Books
Saisio gives us a humorous and empathetic account of the challenge of coming to terms with the world we are born into. It’s a world animated by the distances between generations, shimmering with the individuality of parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Sensual, curious, imaginative and funny, Saisio reminds us that being someone’s child can be a deeply queer experience
Anna Poletti