Sandcastles
The two-time Finlandia Prize winner’s profoundly beautiful, tragic-comic account on love, sex, loyalty and joy.
A woman in her thirties leaves Helsinki to move into her late father’s house in the beach town of Pärnu, Estonia. During her third summer there, she meets a considerably older Finnish architect, who could be her father. Two longing souls seem to have found each other.
They walk on the beach, smoke in the garden, enjoy drinks and have sex. The summer becomes an eternal moment, night and day are no longer defined, endless conversations on love, fear, the past and the future are held and two become one.
While she writes a novel – an exhaustive account of the wonders and horrors of love – he builds a vacation house for his family in Pärnu. One day he leaves for a short trip home to Helsinki.
Sixty years later, the woman lives by herself in a labyrinthine apartment in Helsinki, her hometown, which does no longer feel like home, instead has almost become unrecognizable to her. Just like her own life, where many (things) have disappeared. What remains is the light of a match-sized relationships that glows brightly through the years.
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Reviews
"Viikilä has a talent for crystallisation and the multi-layered nature of his work makes it tempting to revisit it several times. (...) Sandcastles is read slowly, savouring and contemplating what has been said."
"The magic of Sandcastles lies in the untold things. Of course, no book can tell everything even about the story it describes, but in Sandcastles the gaps are accentuated. (...) With a subtle structural twist, Viikilä has succeeded, at the very end of the story, in shifting the focus of attention from love and passion to another theme."
"Jukka Viikilä's new novel meets great expectations - Sandcastles deals with the theme of love with a unique depth"
"The cover of Jukka Viikilä's novel Sandcastles (Otava 2024) charms me. A series of images of the beach in the pale colours of the past evokes the mood of summers long ago. A man and a woman, the distance between them but the feeling of oneness - the photographer's presence is forgotten. The curiousness of the images creates a dreamlike, fairy-tale quality.(...) The book's observations about betrayal and how it colours a relationship are interesting. The narrator's paternal relationship and name play with the Juhani/Juhana are also interesting. The two final chapters of the book are surprising."
"If the beginning of the book is good, the ending, "60 years later", is intoxicating. I won't reveal too much about it because it's an incomparable reading experience. I have never read a text in which old age, with all its travails and inevitable changes that come with aging, is so beautifully described. With respect for an elderly person and for old age. The final part of the book is the crowning glory of a wonderful reading experience."
"A good book confuses the reader's thoughts, and Jukka Viikilä's book really does that." (...) Viikilä writes about the diversity of love in a subtle and beautiful way."
