Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto

I approached this book with much anticipation, and for much of it, was gratified. The mood and setting are remarkably delineated. Set in a remote "hospital" for women in a bleak 1920's Finland, Chapman fills the pages with sensuous detail clearly bringing to life the humid, hothouse atmosphere. It is unclear why many of these women continue to take up bedspace in what purports to be a hospital, which includes a floor more like a private club for women who are bored, hysterical, or just plain trying to get away from their real lives. Such indulgence is tolerated so long as their providers have the funds to keep them there, and their society is comforting for them, with the familiar faces, food, time in the sauna and games playing in the evenings. The book is partially narrated in a first person collective, which gives an unsettling tone throughout, alerting the reader to plot developments, so that when there is a sudden shift, it is not entirely unexpected.

Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto, Maile Chapman "Sunny withholds judgment but she knows, sometimes this happiness, this passive acceptance, sometimes it is the beginning of decline." Sunny Taylor is an American nurse who seeks employment in a private hospital in Finland, escaping bitter memories and looking to soothe them in the cold and remote location. Thus she begins her work at Suvanto, a spa-like hospital focused on caring for wealthy women who are there for various reasons. Some need genuine medical attention, others simply need to be attended to, and a few lack any other place that feels like home. All of them easily leaving behind husbands and family for the refuge of Suvanto. Besides Sunny, an independent and skillful nurse, we meet Julia, a hostile and baiting old woman, and Pearl, a childish socialite absorbed in her own amusement. All of them are at Suvanto to escape, but what they avoid is unique to each. What unites them is the need to have nothing matter, no complications to deal with. Suvanto provides them with an excuse to be treated for medical conditions when really they are there for leisure. The numbing routine of crafts and walks and gazing at the frozen sea affects them, in a way the reader does not foresee. Chapman builds the characters slowly and delicately. Sunny, soon after her eager arrival, is at odds with herself, as she desperately wants to matter: "Here, without anything truly at risk, she feels like she's merely pretending, in everything. The work is nearly meaningless, and life is nothing but a search for meaning, yes? Isn't that right? [...] Doesn't that mean for as long as she remains here, completing such tasks, she is wasting her energy? Wasting her life?" Rather than finding contentment in a job well-done, she begins to unravel. She begins to question the true motivation of the women who come to Suvanto. Julia, a former dancer who arrives to manipulate and harass the staff, elicits no sympathy from Sunny as she creates contention and ill-will in the hospital. And then Pearl arrives, a repeat visitor; a wealthy woman who buys jewels as others might buy candy, eager to fall into her routine. Of her, we read: "She likes to move from place to place, most especially when the place exists without her, and can be returned to with no explanations, no responsibilities. With frequent departures she conceals the fact that she cannot form friendships." Her lack of connection to a fixed location becomes a pivotal point in understanding her character and the meaning of Suvanto. The pace of the story is slow and spends its time focusing on the details of Finland, the relationships between the women and their battles for attention, and the change in composure that Sunny experiences in her new locale. The pace can be deceptive, as Chapman is knitting together the details that will become significant and apparent once the whole is created. Her writing is light and airy, while the content is not. She uses phrase

A sanitorium set in Suvanto in rural Finland, sometime in the late 1920s, has drawn female patients from all over Europe and America. Many are wealthy women who enjoy the specialized spa treatments and the chance to escape from their everyday lives for periods of up to six months. One physician asserts that "these are bored women....They like being sick." A young American nurse, Sunny Taylor, who has taken a job here to escape the difficult memories of her own life, is also hard pressed to be completely sympathetic with the self-indulgent, yet Sunny recognizes that they all do experience real pain--and they are all unhappy with their lives "outside." The arrival of Julia Dey, a woman with a serious infection, changes the atmosphere. Julia is often mean-spirited and sometimes deliberately cruel, and she creates chaos. Gradually, the lives of the women and their difficulties unfold--many are friends from previous stays. Dr. Peter Weber, the physician in charge of the hospital, believes that most of their problems are gynecological, and he is developing a surgical stitch which he believes will cure some of their problems. This, in combination with hysterectomy, may lead him to fame, he believes-if he can get his research completed in this rural hospital. It is his surgery on one of the women which leads to the climax and the long denouement, as the conflicts demand resolution. In several places throughout this debut novel, author Maile Chapman refers to the action of Euripedes' The Bacchae, and though the parallels between that early Greek play and this contemporary novel are not exact, many of the themes become clearer when considered in view of that play. The "Bacchae" in Greek mythology were sometimes considered madwomen, who, acting together, enacted their own vengeance and appeared to be unconquerable. It may be this trait which has led some critics to call this a "proto-feminist" novel, though the shallow lives of the female "up-patients" certainly do not represent any ideal to which most feminists aspire. The novel's themes, as in the play, also depend on sets of contrasts: civilization vs. savagery, freedom vs. control, the rational vs. the irrational, order vs. chaos, and even men vs. women. The conflicts do get resolved eventually, and, with echoes of the Greek chorus reverberating throughout the conclusion, many readers will feel that the balance of the universe is restored in ways similar to Greek tragedy. The novel is dark, almost claustrophobic in its intensity. By leaving much up to the reader and not spelling out exactly what is happening in the latter part of the book, Chapman avoids the trite and keeps her novel mysterious and atmospheric. The novel is often frustrating, however. The characters are not likable and rarely inspire sympathy, and the author's real purpose is not clear. Long character sketches sometimes prove to be for characters who are peripheral to the main action, and the idea of the women as

The following is my original review of this book. After sending it, I returned and edited it bending to pressure from two other readers. I was not comfortable with my action and have returned the review, as close as possible, to its original form. The editorial description said this is a bleak novel. I didn't see it that way. It describes a situation which I would think is much less prevalent than it was in the 1920s although I know such places still exist. The location is, what used to be called a Rest Home, in Finland. It is needless to say the environment is bleak because I would assume most places tend to be, if not bleak, at least cut off during much of the year in Finland. Women, mostly middle aged and fairly wealthy, come to the facility to recover from depression brought on by the disruptive, long snow covered "night" of the far north. Just think of Al Pacino in "Insomnia". These women are the wives of executives from the timber companies in the area. There is nothing physically wrong with these women except for the conditions of oncoming aging. The timber companies subsidize an acute care hospital for local women who are sick so that the wives, who usually aren't ill, have a place to which to retreat. The system has worked well for years. The ill local women, who are admitted to the first floor, come, are treated and return home to their families. The depressed women, who are admitted to the second floor, come, become part of a community of women who share their values and mores and complaints, stay the winter and return home for the daylight part of the year. They usually return for the dark part of the next year to join their friends and be restored again. The novel is seen through the eyes of Sunny, an American who is the Head Nurse for the second floor and who has come to Finland to fight her own demons. Into this situation comes two people. First is Julia, a former entertainment celebrity, who is recovering from the depression and aftereffects of a bout of a STD. She knows her husband and partner has given this disease to her, and she is very angry. The husband on the other hand, wanting to groom another younger, more healthy partner, seems to have shipped her off to Suvanto. Julia is more sophisticated and nasty than the other women, and she quickly becomes a sort of leader, in a negative way. The second person who arrives is Dr. Peter who is an OBGYN practitioner and an advocate of the burgeoning procedure of Caesarean Section deliveries. He doesn't understand why all of these basically healthy women are ensconsed in, what is basically, a spa and taking up beds which could be used for problem pregnancies. He begins to "cure" the timber company wives and to empty beds. The second person he cures is Julia. As a result of his actions, Julia dies. The other women, in their well bred way, react to the doctor's "program", and the resulting actions of these women is a twist and resolution which I didn't see

Your Presence Is Requested at Savanto is a rare look into a Flemish Convalescent clinic during a period of time when Russia and the European world is in conflict with women of the time. The setting is 1920's in a silent Flemish culture deep conclusion and a sanatorium that caters to the illness of the mind and body of women. In the time frame of 1920 and in Europe, illness of the body and mind were a hush hush subject, the women normally sent to remote locations to recover alone and with a secret to hide. This author has selected a perfect setting in the Flemish location as it bleak, dark, mysterious, cold in temperament and the mind. The sanatorium, is the keeper of womens illness and has characters of time in women who are poor to the upper classes. The hospital is even arranged by floors as the more prominent women on the top levels and the poor on the lowest levels. The "up-patients" or foreign women of privilage are the characters that come into play with an American nurse named "Sunny". Her back story is one that brings her to Europe to escape and try and find her mind, Her selection of this sanatorium, called "Suvanto" begins her adventurers in her inter-relations with each of the women and their individual stories of why they are recovering. As the difference language and customs are a delight to learn, the author, Marie Chapman has captured the concept or spirit of this book. I found at times a closeness to several of the women and their search for understanding. Each trying to work out their problems in an atmosphere that is dark and unhappy. The times are changing as research in women's surgery procedures need a place with women ...womens intimate problems .. enter a Doctor and his research of a new surgical stitch he is developing for birthing. The women who are already in seclusion and unhappy due to womens ills are more upset just hearing the rumors of the pending changes that will involve birthing. The main characters who surround Sunny are a select group with various problems that inter react in their daily order. The ending is a little slow to unravel and you are searching to answers ,as a reader to pre determine what will happen and who it has happened too? As a reader most of us always try to learn who is about to do what and why. I am no different in as much as I keep a pencil about to jot down who and what I believe will happen ...in this case, I look back and see several pages where I have changed my mind ..over and over again, my decision as to an adquate ending has been changed! When the ending actually is disclosed, by the author it is a bit of another turn. I found that all of the little clues along the way could lead you in a multitude of endings and you are taken aback at the actualy ending provided by this author. I was delighted with this technique as in my view it shows an author who leads you on a merry chase! I found this book haunting even after the book has ended and closed. I could