Stunning. The sort of mystery that builds feeding you little clues in piecemeal chunks so you have to keep your wits about you. Read it quickly, which shouldn’t be a problem for it is truly compulsive else you may lose how it all fits together. It begins with the funeral of Norma’s mother, Anita, a suicide from jumping under a tube train. We are told that the Naakha (they are Finnish) family are unusual, we learn that Norma’s hair grows a metre a day and has strange powers. This is a secret her mother has urged Norma to keep hidden for “freaks” do not have a life of their own. At the funeral Norma’s hair alerts her to trouble and so the girl investigates Anita’s last few months. We enter a shady world of mafia ilk in a clever tale with twisted individuals and a highly original scenario. I loved it. ~ Sarah Broadhurst
The hair-raising mash-up of feminist X-Men, gothic fairy tale, family saga and biting social criticism that is taking Europe by storm.
When Anita Naakka jumps in front of an oncoming train, her daughter, Norma, is left alone with the secret they have spent their lives hiding: Norma has supernatural hair, sensitive to the slightest changes in her mood--and the moods of those around her--moving of its own accord, corkscrewing when danger is near. And so it is her hair that alerts her, while she talks with a strange man at her mother's funeral, that her mother may not have taken her own life. Setting out to reconstruct Anita's final months--sifting through puzzling cell phone records, bank statements, video files--Norma begins to realise that her mother knew more about her hair's powers than she let on: a sinister truth beyond Norma's imagining.
Alright, hold on tight, because this is the best novel you will read this fall * Femina, Denmark *
Sofi Oksanen is one of the brightest shining stars in Nordic literature. I want to devour Norma whole. * Norrkopings Tidningar, Sweden *
Norma is addictive, lucid, breathtakingly suspenseful, and on top of this it is stunningly observant, eerily well-researched, critical, with feminist overtones and very, very relatable * Affarsmagasinet Forum, Finland *
Author
About Sofi Oksanen
Sofi Oksanen is a Finnish-Estonian novelist and playwright. Purge was her first novel to appear in English. She has received numerous prizes for her work, including the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize, the Prix Femina, the Budapest Grand Prize, the European Book Prize, and the Nordic Council Literature Prize. She lives in Helsinki.
