Purge by Sofi Oksanen (2008; Black Cat. ISBN 978-0-8021-7077-4)
I ran into this novel in Poets and Writers Magazine where it was being discussed as an “international best seller”. That’s not what drew me to the book. It was the revelation that the story takes place in Estonia, one of the few European countries I’ve actually visited. Couple my personal knowledge of Tallinn, the capital city my wife and I spent a wondrous day in about five years ago, with the fact that I actually know an emigre from Estonia (and may well someday use his story as the basis for my own Estonian novel) well, you can figure out what I did. I bought Purge from the friendly booksellers at Northern Lights here in Duluth.
Aliide and Zara. An old woman living out the end of her life in a lonely farm house in rural Estonia and a young woman, really no more than a girl, whose life should be just beginning, but, due to her own bad choices, may well end too soon. Aliide is the old woman. Zara is the young Russian-Estonian prostitute on the run. Their lives are drawn together, seemingly by fate, but in reality, by design. Fast paced and breathless. Foul and disheartening. Redemptive and aggravating in its final pages, Purge is a literary thriller that takes from the reader about as much as it gives. That’s not a bad thing; it’s just a fact. You’ll find yourself, in the way of The Reader and Stones in the River, diving headlong into the abyss; the dark, dirty world of ordinary humanness. The question is: Does Ms. Oksanen let you, the reader, up for air? Read the book to find out. 4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.
