The Year of the Hare: A Novel

The worst sides of the western society have been revealed. And, what makes it even more ovbious: almost 20 years before the stressful and hypercommercial way of life really took off! The Year Of The Hare is a story about escape. It is allso a very truthful description of Finland, and it's people. Being one of the politically most "incorrect" books, it plays around with the posibility of revolution, wich made it forbidden in some socialist countries ( as far as I know...). Ther it is, the western way of life, summed up, pretty completely.

This book is so hilarious and I recomend this book to everybody, who wants to have a good laughs and likes good literature

All the little jokes and "finnish"-isms' don't really translate that well,but you will definately get the idea!!Book was also made to a movie,which(suprise,suprise)doesn't flatten the book at all!!Take it with you to the metro and forget about the hussle and bussle of this materialized world!(Good luck finding it..)

Everyone who is over 45 and works in the modern, hectic western world is dreaming of it! The opportunity to jump off and just break with the life you know and start a new one up. The main character Vaatanen suddenly gets this opportunity when he and his newspaper colleage suddely hit a baby hare with the car on a assaignement in the Finnish woods. Vaatanen gets out of the car and eventually finds the hurt hare. His colleague is by then so mad with him that he has left Vaatanen alone and driven away... This starts a long journey for Vaatanen thru a rural finnish environment. He meets a lot of people and breaks with his old life. Quit his job, divorce the wife, sell his beloved boat (everything by telephone calls) and starts taking one day at a time. The book is partly very funny and partly very "beatiful" - meaning the description of finnish people and nature and tradition. Paasilinnas short and non-descripting prose is like carved in wood. It's nothing but a very good book and I think it will surprise many readers with it's very drastic and amusing humor.

I checked this book out of my college library on a whim; it's not that long, but fantastically well done. It reminds me of something like Proulx's the Shipping News; written more objectively than subjectively, an account of someone's journey through a turn around from a stale life. It reads like a story from around a campfire, the events grow more and more interesting, one becomes more and more attached to the protagonist throughout (it does start a tad odd, and maybe slow, but stick with it!). I found it very inspiring, and the kind of book I could read over and over again. That's why I was trying to order it, although apparently its out of print. I recall reading on the cover that the author is a highly celebrated finnish author, and this particular novel was widely celebrated around Europe, particularly in Finland and France. Good luck finding it, and enjoy!