They Know Not What They Do

October 1, 2017
American and Finnish families struggle with technology, immigration, and the unintended consequences of their own actions.Renowned neurologist Joe Chayefski is a man with many problems, some familiar and some more exotic. His wife is buried in her work, his daughters hide in their rooms or behind their electronic devices, and mysterious figures have started to harass him and his family, protesting against his ethically dubious experiments on animals. The last problem seems connected, somehow, to his ex-wife in Finland and their child, whom Joe effectively abandoned years ago. For his first book translated into English, the Finnish novelist Valtonen has written a big social novel about upper-middle-class life today. Its villains are the standard baddies of the genre: unscrupulous tech companies, media monopolies, pharmaceutical firms, and terrorists. Its protagonists suffer from malaise, alienation, cultural misunderstandings, and the unintended consequences of their actions in a world too big and complicated to control. Although the social problems in Valtonen's novel are old news (gadgets meant to bring us together really push us apart!), novels like his stand or fall, ultimately, on their characters. Do they reward attention over hundreds and hundreds of pages? In this case, yes. Some of Valtonen's characters--namely Joe, his ex-wife, Alina, and their son, Samuel--are complex yet coherent, self-reflective and self-deceived in equal measure. They remain mysteries to each other and to themselves. These are problems older than digital technology. And for novelists, they are far deeper and more fruitful.A contemporary novel that doesn't lose sight of perennial dilemmas.

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November 1, 2017
Finnish author, psychologist, and Fulbright scholar Valtonen's novel begins with Joe Chayefski, a neuroscientist, moving to Finland with Alina, the mother of his child. Joe soon becomes frustrated with Finnish life, and he eventually leaves Alina and their infant son, Samuel. Twenty years later, Joe has remarried, had two daughters, and become a successful researcher in Baltimore. In a satirical thread, Valtonen takes aim at and warns against, the power of social media not unlike Dave Eggers does in The Circle (2013), as Joe attempts to protect his daughters from corporate manipulation. Joe's world is further transformed when his lab is vandalized by animal-rights activists. As these attacks escalate, and as his life starts to spiral out of control, Joe's past collides with the present. While this novel is deeply in debt to the sweeping scope of Jonathan Franzen (there is even a character named Mr. Franzen), its best moments occur when Valtonen reads more like the understated work of Anne Tyler. Ultimately, this hugely ambitious work of contemporary realism offers a dramatic warning about the influence of digital culture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)