Finnish Weird and the Cult of the Chili Pepper: "The Core of the Sun" by Johanna Sinisalo
Readers of this website will be familiar with the concept of genre-bending literature, and if that is your thing, have I got a treat for you: a literary field trip to Finland.
Johanna Sinisalo is one of several contemporary Finnish authors who are wholeheartedly embracing the bizarre and the uncategorizable. In 2010 she coined the term “Finnish Weird” as an umbrella term for what she described as “the blurring of genre boundaries, the bringing together of different genres and the unbridled flight of imagination.”
The Core of the Sun is a stellar example of Finnish Weird. Sinisalo’s third novel to be translated in English, it mashes up dystopia, alternate history, speculative fiction, and satire, to produce a portrait of Finland under a horrifying “eusistocratic” government. In this fictional Finland, women have been “domesticated,” the result of a process combining eugenics, hormonal and neurochemical methods, and behavioural conditioning. The result is that there are two female sexes: the pretty, vacuous, biddable and fertile elois, and the ugly, intelligent, capable and sterilized morlocks (readers of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine will recognize these names). Elois are destined for wife-and motherhood, while morlocks are relegated to menial labour.
Our main character is Vanna/Vera, who was born with the physical characteristics of an eloi, but the mental capacity of a morlock. Raised with her little sister Manna (an eloi through-and-through) by their quietly subversive grandmother, Vanna/Vera is able to pass for an eloi, which gives her an advantage in society—as long as she can keep up the illusion.
There are two main plotlines driving this story. One is Vanna/Vera’s desperation to find out what happened to Manna, who married young, eloi-style, and then vanished soon after. (Unsurprisingly, the disappearance of an eloi is of little interest to the police.) Vanna/Vera is wracked with guilt for what she perceives as her failing to look out for Manna, and she is haunted daily by the possibility that Manna is still alive, out there somewhere, needing her.
The second plotline, from which the novel takes its name, is what elevates this novel from being simply a dystopia to being a fully fledged member of the Finnish Weird clan. You see, in eusistocracy, all “recreational substances” are prohibited. This includes…wait for it…chili peppers, and all foods containing capsaicin. And for good or for ill, Vanna/Vera is a “capso”—she’s addicted to hot chilis.
Together with her partner in crime, Jare, she illegally deals in chili peppers. As the government cracks down harder and harder on the supply of capsaicin being smuggled in through the country’s closed borders, Vanna/Vera struggles to keep the dark “cellar” of her mind from overtaking her without the help of a good dose of heat. When she and Jare make contact with the Gaians, who are secret chili growers masquerading as a nature religion, Vanna/Vera suddenly has access to the freshest, hottest chili peppers going, including the experimental new hybrid The Core of the Sun chili. It’s only then that she begins to uncover the truth about capsaicin.
The story is told through narration—both Vanna/Vera and Jare get turns to speak—but also through the use of supplementary material such as letters, school assignments, newspaper articles, government reports, and scientific and historical documents. The tonal shift in these sections works well; the fictional treatises are chilling and formal, and give a real sense of the society’s pathological fixation on maintaining the rigid gender and class divisions at all costs. They are so convincing that Sinisalo was able to insert an actual historical document, the “Excerpt from ‘A Few Words About Sterilization and the Sterilization Law’” from 1935, without it seeming out of place.
There is a lot to parse in this novel, from the representation of the qualities that embody an eloi versus what makes someone a morlock; to the commentary on men’s complicity and the formation of this dystopian society; to the way that elois are encouraged to backstab each other and never form deep female friendships; to the transcendent qualities of the chili peppers themselves. A mixture of science, strangeness, politics, feminism, addiction, sisterhood, intrigue, and even gardening, this story is one of a kind.
If you like your novels spicy, then do yourself a favour and check out The Core of the Sun.
The Core of the Sun
by Johanna Sinisalo
304 page. 2016
About Lindsay Hobbs
Lindsay is a freelance editor, writer, and podcaster living in the Haliburton Highlands of Ontario, Canada. In between reading books (and writing about them), she works as a library branch assistant and program developer. Currently, Lindsay is an editor at Cloud Lake Literary and the co-host of Story Girls: A Fortnightly Podcast About Books, with a Dash of Absurdity. You can find her personal bookish musings at her blog, Topaz Literary.
