The Core of the Sun

I'm still trying to figure out why I have this book in the first place. What trusted source recommended this Finnish Weird novel? Who prompted me to set this aside so that it was the rare book on my shelf just waiting for the right time to read? Let's just say, I'd like a word.

In the first chapter we find ourselves in the midst of some illicit dealings going down at a cemetery. It seems to involve hot peppers being tested for potency by our protagonist snaking a finger under her waistband and dabbing it against her vagina? I've got questions.

The frame widens and we find ourselves in the Eusistocratic Republic of Finland. A heavy-handed dystopian world where women, or elois, are raised to be subservient mates solely obsessed with romance, weddings and pleasing their man. Never too smart or demanding, just content to raise a family and keep a tidy home. All this wrapped around a mystery of a missing sister and expanding a lucrative but illegal hot pepper trade. Neither, though resolved by the end of the novel, really work to tie anything together or work to a larger cohesive theme.

And just hammering it home. Not a lot of subtlety on display here. There are manuals for the discipline of women that sound a lot like dog training guides. Repeated emphasis that our hero never appear too smart as a woman and more akin to an etherized lobotomy patient. And maybe Sinisalo gets a bit of a pass for pulling much of her material from the real world, (there's even a Transcendental Capsaicinophilic Society!) that might generously put her in the same speculative fiction realm that Margaret Atwood treads. But make no mistake this is no Gilead.

This story is surreal. It felt like historical fiction, but for a non-history. Interesting story with moving characters...I finished it and I'm still almost sure what happened, though.

This was a fun read. A dystopian misogynist Finland where women are nurtured and genetically bred into dumb submissive blondes, eager to please their fairy-tale future husbands. Naturally our heroine is a rebel, secretly revolting against the status quo. She's also addicted to chili, which is the only drug left on the market. She bands together with a drug dealer and a group of growers, hoping to escape while desperately trying to keep her loved ones safe. Then the plot goes off into a bit of magical realism that's very entertaining. What I found a bit cheap and irritating, was the the dumb bimbo stereotype callout considering this subgroup of women does exist in most cultures. There was something slightly vicious about it, that could have fit more into a satire than a dystopia. (Though, this probably qualifies as satirical dystopia). One thing that saddened me was, that the grandma didn't even try to educate the sister into a conscious non-drone. Was the statement of the novel, that it's all nature and not nurture? But I really enoyed how the novel wove eugenics and experiments into the difference between the sexes (the toy truck test) into the world building. (A novelization for the [b:Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference 8031168 Delusions of Gender How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference Cordelia Fine https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348833681s/8031168.jpg 12635310] readers)Small detail: I would have preferred if the main character's synaesthesia would have stayed unmentioned. It was a neat detail up until it was explicitly called out.