going underground in Jyväskylä

Reading a Finnish novel. That doesn't happen very often, I tend to gravitate towards British, Irish and American literature.

Shame-facedly I have to admit that I only discovered this Finnish author - Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen - because one of his novels ( The Rabbit Back Literature Society, not a bad one ) had been translated and found its way to the English Books section in my local library. I read that one and then moved on to the one called Harjukaupungin salakäytävät.

The story is set in Jyväskylä, in my opinion a very boring and non-descript Finnish town where I've only passed through once. In this book, I discover that Jyväskylä has not only magical qualities but a network of secret, underground passages.

Makes me want to hop on the next train there and go exploring.

The intriguing theme is cinematic places and cinematic living. One of the principles of this is that if you open your mind to the cinematic, dramatic and beautiful things around you in the very ordinary, everyday world and live accordingly, you will also have a cinematic, dramatic and beautiful existence. My thoughts exactly!

So I will go and do that. But first I have to finish the novel. Apparently it's been printed in two versions with different endings, and you can't know which version you have happened to get.

( Picture from adlibris.com )