Customer Reviews

The Rabbit Back Literature Society

This is perhaps one of the weirdest, strangest book I have read in a long time. Captivating, hypnotic nearly, I was from the start hooked on the peculiar story of books borrowed from Rabbit Back town's library, with oddly changed plotline in them, such as classics like Crime and Punishment. Ella, the heroine, is so puzzled that she quietly starts her inquest into what is going on behind the scenes at the library. But soon, at the time of her father's death, she is made the tenth member of the secret club of Rabbit Back literature Society. Laura White is the adored but elusive president of the Society and at the celebration evening of the Tenth member, she simply vanishes in the midst a snow storm. What happened to Laura White is then the on-going mystery...But there is a lot of mysteries to unveil as Ella tried to discover the dark truth behind the elitist little society of the other nine writers and what exactly is 'The Game' about...This is a totally bizarre, striking and riveting book, with a very Finnish atmosphere, not unlike the odd Moomins books. It talks about the mystery of writing, how vampirish writers have to be, sucking out all material possible from around them, but the style is strongly evocative of fairy tales, dreams, myths. It is full of snow and long Nordic nights, and fabulously enjoyable...

This book deserves much more glowing reviews, so here goes. This is a wonderful novel about is about literature, books, the Game, mythology and snow. It starts with aspiring author Ella Milana, who has lovely curving lips and defective ovaries. She is invited to join exclusive writers club, the Rabbit Back Literature Society, where she meets the other members, and plays the Game with them to find out their biggest secrets. In the meantime, Laura White, founder of the RBLS has vanished, and who was she anyway? Laura's novels about Creatureville are so popular people make mythological statues based on the characters, and mythological mapping.

Well, it does all make sense, in a surreal Finnish magical realism sense. And it's wonderful, give it a go.

Took me a while to read and get into, but once you're a couple of chapters in, you're hooked. The writing was just stunning, the imagary wonderful, and the ideas clever. I loved the structure of the book, the idea of 'The Game', and the magical realism that you're never quite sure about. But the end was just...odd. Without giving anything away, the book could either have ended at the last chapter, without the epilogue, or could have done to have been at least 1/3 longer. The epilogue felt rushed, out of pace, and as though the author was just trying to tie everything up neatly in a bow, using deus ex, and some silly last minute misleading prose,that just have the book an oddly deflating and unsatisfying ending. For such a beautiful book, the writing and structure of the end saddened and disappointed me. A missed shot, I feel.
I will look forward to what Jaaskelainen writes in the future and hope future books are a little better paced.

The Rabbit Back Literature Society is something special. Originally published in 2006 it was translated from the Finnish by Lola M. Rogers. It's hard to judge how successful the translation is as I'm unfamiliar with both Finnish and Finnish literature and I don't know whether the translation has kept the rhythm and the beats of its original language. Unfamiliarity with the original language also makes it hard to judge some of the linguistic quirks of the novel as it's unclear whether things that bugged me were due to authorial choice or whether this is just a normal Finnish practice. One of the things that I really had to get used to was the fact that our protagonist, Ella is often referred to by not just her first and last name, but even by her full name, Ella Amanda Milana. This just felt strange to me and shook me out of the narrative a number of times at first.

Jääskeläinen gives us a fascinating narrative, which frames a mystery which is unravelled in sometimes almost dreamlike flashbacks related by the members of the Rabbit Back Society. These members run the gamut of genres and are all successful authors. Some of them receive more page time than others and not all the members spill as part of The Game, which is the way we get to know some of them better. The three other members, other than Ella, the reader gets to know well are Martti Winter the successful literary writer, Ingrid Katz, the YA writer, and Arne C. Ahlqvist a.k.a. Aura Jokinen, the SF writer. Through them we get glimpses of the legendary and mysterious Laura White and the genesis of the Rabbit Back Literary Society. I found their reminiscences fascinating and often chilling, but they always handed both Ella and the readers clues to solving the mystery of Laura White and the reputed first tenth member of the Society.

The Game the Society members play with each other is an interesting device, which allows Jääskeläinen to showcase the somewhat sinister undertones to the Society and give his protagonist a way to get to the bottom of the book's central mystery. It's also very much not a game and seeing the lengths they will go to in obtaining what they want can be somewhat disturbing. The book is also rather meta at some points, concerned as it is with writing and writers. However, it's also very much a literature scholar's narrative as Ella often approaches events from this angle and connections are drawn between books, authors and themes, all to aid Ella in solving the puzzle. The structure of the novel is interesting; the interweaving of third-person past and present, interleaved with first-person narration and fragments from newspaper articles, creates depth and background to the text without Ella or the narrator having to tell the reader things outright.

Jääskeläinen's book is more magical realist than straight-up fantasy, but I can see it appealing to those who like supernatural mysteries. I really enjoyed The Rabbit Back Literature Society. It was an interesting story, with some fascinating exploration of the human psyche and an intricate narrative structure. If you're looking for something speculative outside of the norm, then The Rabbit Back Literature Society comes highly recommended.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

This is a puzzler. An eerie, otherworldly real-world fantasy with dark humour, mystery and mythical creatures - maybe.

It reminded me of the Green Knowe series and Jo Walton's Among Others (none of which I liked very much) - elements of fantasy in the real world.

The Scandinavian origins shine through, the names, places and details all felt like the Finland it's written and set in.

Supply teacher Ella, an aspiring writer, unexpectedly finds herself invited to become the tenth member of a secretive literary society, only for a mystery surrounding its famous founding writer to spring up on the eve of her inauguration.

Through a game between members, Ella determines to discover their long-held secrets and find out just what is going on within this group of renowned writers. Just what are they hiding?

It's a strange concoction of secrets, puzzling events, histories, some quite funny scenes, and unexplained happenings.

Enjoyable on the whole, it left me feeling like something was missing. A few loose ends weren't tied up, but I actually liked the ending. I just don't think I like books that try to mix fantasy and reality in this way, putting mythical creatures into everyday settings.

It's beautifully written and there's lots of great scenes and characters, so definitely one to try.

I loved this book, beautifully written, strange, enchanting and captivating. Full of snow, mystery, love, hate fantastic writing and mind games.

This one popped up as a Daily Deal a couple of weeks back and sounded intriguing. Like a lot of avid readers I like to dabble with a bit of writing so stories about writers are usually a good choice. This one is, at heart, a mystery story - with suspense, tension and a touch of the unexplained or "fantasy" about it.

Translated from Finnish I found a few clunky sentences or turns of phrase but not too many and not enough to make me switch off from the story.

Overall, an interesting slightly different read which I really enjoyed.

In the end, it all comes down to the return of Emperor Rat. But in the meantime, why not amuse, more so even challenge yourself with the puzzle that is THE RABBIT BACK LITERATURE SOCIETY?

The product of author Pasi Jääskeläinen's multi-faceted mind, TRBLS is a meditation on the author's lifelong obsession with vampires; at least the writerly kind, who, as a species, are expert in the ways of these mythical, blood-sucking fiends; or, as one of the characters in a novel written by Martti Winter (one of the main characters in TRBLS) puts it, "the crocodiles in the river."

Chief among these apex predators is world-renowned author Laura White, who started the Rabbit Back Literature Society circa 1970 for seemingly altruistic reasons; wherein the children she had chosen to mentor and guide into prosperous writing careers could hone their skills and blossom in a communal greenhouse of her own making. But, midway through TRBLS, the question emerges whether these children were Laura White's progeny or her prey...

Enter Ella Milana, a substitute literature teacher at Rabbit Back high school, who gets embroiled in the mystery of Laura White and her society upon the discovery of a rogue copy of the novel CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, wherein certain critical events have been preposterously altered.

"...the criminal Raskolnikov was abruptly slain in the middle of the street. Sonya, the hooker with the heart of gold, shot him through the heart."

Spurred by this anomaly, Milana, a girl who never lost her fascination with the piecing together of puzzles, digs deep down the rabbit hole at the core of TRBLS. Milana, on the merits of a story published in the local supplement, is invited to become the tenth member of the Society, ramping up the personal conflict within her between the puzzle solver and the girl who aspires to fame through writing fiction. Owing to Jääskeläinen's skill as a storyteller, this convenient plot point feels organic and inevitable. What ensues is, not only a touch of hilarity, but the unraveling of the mystery as Milana (from the unique position of a relative outsider on the inside and an insider with an out) doggedly keeps the pieces falling into place.

TRBLS is a novel about big questions that have been jabbing us in the cerebellum for thousands of years: the meaning of life, death, the existence of God ... and how we as humans rarely ever truly discuss and debate these ideas, concepts and ultimate truths, instead opting for the small talk and quotidian prattle that sums up our day-to-day interactions. What saves it from bogging down in a philosophical morass of college text book proportions are the wonderful characters who people it. You prick them, (or invoke Rule 21) and they bleed. They act their parts upon the page so naturally we as readers forget they are literary constructs, and the entertainment keeps us turning.

REVIEWER'S NOTE: This review would be woefully incomplete without mention of Lola Rogers, who translated THE RABBIT BACK LITERATURE SOCIETY into English from the original Finnish. Whatever may have been lost in the metamorphosis from one language to the other is inconsequential to the fact of its transformation into an amazing English-language book.

REVIEW ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT tqrstories.com

Loved it. I love that Scandinavian slightly magical story telling. This is a rather dark story, full of vivid characters; a slowly unravelling mystery. Lovely!

A interesting and strange tale...best I can come up with is 'magic realism'. I just wished it had been longer with a fuller ex0planation.