Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto - Hardcover

Chapman, Maile

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555975534 ISBN 13: 9781555975531

Publisher: Graywolf Pr, 2010

Synopsis

A brilliant and unnerving debut novel about the mysteriously ill patients at a remote hospital in Finland

In a remote, piney wood in Finland stands a convalescent hospital called Suvanto, a curving concrete example of austere Scandinavian design. It is the 1920s, and the patients, all women, seek relief from ailments real and imagined. On the lower floors are the stoic Finnish women; on the upper floors are foreign women of privilege—the “up-patients.” They are tended to by head nurse Sunny Taylor, an American who has fled an ill-starred life only to retreat behind a mask of crisp professionalism. On a late-summer day a new patient arrives on Sunny’s ward— a faded, irascible former ballroom-dance instructor named Julia Dey. Sunny takes it upon herself to pierce the mystery of Julia’s reserve. Soon, Julia’s difficulty, her tightly coiled anger, places her at the center of the ward’s tangled emotional life. This fraught dynamic animates Maile Chapman’s ambitious first novel. As summer turns to fall, and fall to a long, dark winter, the patients hear rumors about changes being implemented at Suvanto by an American obstetrician, Dr. Peter Weber, who is experimenting with a new surgical stitch. Their familiar routine threatened, the women are not happy (they were not happy before), and the story’s escalating menace builds to a terrifying conclusion.

About this title

Review:

"Exceptional... more than simply an exercise in chilling atmospherics... Chapman takes the women's - often seemingly petty - hopes and fears, and creates a fascinating portrait of group consciousness. A psychologically unnerving, elusive and readable book" (Financial Times)

"A gem; weird, vivid and acrobatic, its intricacies are sophisticated, its stance beguiling and complex. This is a writer of real power and aplomb" (Lucy Ellmann Guardian)

"This scary, peculiar story of institutionalised women is immaculately handled and builds to a disturbing but inevitable climax" (The Times)

"A beautiful, edgy and captivating novel" (Victoria Moore Daily Mail)

"An eerily brilliant, psychologically sharp take on the Bacchae set in a 1920s Finnish sanatorium" (Adrian Turpin Herald, Christmas round up)

Book Description:

A brilliant and unnerving debut novel about the mysteriously ill patients at a remote hospital in Finland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Graywolf Pr
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1555975534
• ISBN 13: 9781555975531
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 263