Irrational Things

The narrator of the book, a nameless woman, travels to Barcelona. She meets a foreign man and falls in love with him. The man is the total opposite of her in many ways. Where she has been brought up to exert control, to plan and to master her life, he is sort of a free soul. He doesn’t want to worry about tomorrow; rather, he just drifts freely, taking things as they come.

The book discusses not only love but also writing about it. Is love a suitable subject to deal with if you want to be taken seriously? And what is love really? Is it comparable to the class system, a way of controlling property and heritage, or something else, something difficult to explain but unavoidable, for all of us to deal with at some point of our lives. Turunen handles her themes in a melancholy and playful way. The short, clear sentences convey precise observations about the contradictions of life, norms, the expectations we face and the difficulties in fulfilling them. The narration flows effortlessly and takes the reader to a fascinating and private world, strongly connected with our times but at the same time teeming with eternal questions. .