The Core of the Sun

I'm still trying to figure out why I have this book in the first place. What trusted source recommended this Finnish Weird novel? Who prompted me to set this aside so that it was the rare book on my shelf just waiting for the right time to read? Let's just say, I'd like a word.

In the first chapter we find ourselves in the midst of some illicit dealings going down at a cemetery. It seems to involve hot peppers being tested for potency by our protagonist snaking a finger under her waistband and dabbing it against her vagina? I've got questions.

The frame widens and we find ourselves in the Eusistocratic Republic of Finland. A heavy-handed dystopian world where women, or elois, are raised to be subservient mates solely obsessed with romance, weddings and pleasing their man. Never too smart or demanding, just content to raise a family and keep a tidy home. All this wrapped around a mystery of a missing sister and expanding a lucrative but illegal hot pepper trade. Neither, though resolved by the end of the novel, really work to tie anything together or work to a larger cohesive theme.

And just hammering it home. Not a lot of subtlety on display here. There are manuals for the discipline of women that sound a lot like dog training guides. Repeated emphasis that our hero never appear too smart as a woman and more akin to an etherized lobotomy patient. And maybe Sinisalo gets a bit of a pass for pulling much of her material from the real world, (there's even a Transcendental Capsaicinophilic Society!) that might generously put her in the same speculative fiction realm that Margaret Atwood treads. But make no mistake this is no Gilead.