One night in 1992, Aliide Truu finds what at first glance
seems to be a pile of rags in her front yard in Estonia. A closer look reveals
that it’s a young woman, bruised and battered. Against all instincts, she goes
out and brings the girl in. Zara tells the first of her stories to Aliide; that
she’s had a fight with her rich husband. In reality, Zara is running from her
pimp, who lied to her in her Vladivostok home, telling her she could go to
Germany for job training. He brought her to Germany and made her into a sex
slave, controlling her with emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. The shame
she feels over this makes her lie to Aliide, sure that she is so disgusting no
one would ever help her if they knew. And she wants- needs- Aliide to take her
in. They have a connection that Aliide doesn’t know about.
Aliide has secrets of her own. Flashbacks show her living in
Estonia as it’s invaded and controlled first by the Fascists and then by the
Stalinists. She is ashamed that she was brutally raped as part of an
interrogation. She also married a Communist, making the townspeople she grew up
with call her a collaborator and shun her. Then there is the matter of what
ultimately happened to her brother-in-law, a man she wanted to take from her
sister- the sister she had deported via her husband’s contacts. Both women are
deeply ashamed to what has been done *to* them.
The ending surprised me. I suppose it shouldn’t have, as
Aliide had already shown herself to be a survivor. I thought it was be best
ending possible, despite being violent.
It’s a hard book to read. Not because of the writing; the
writing flows quickly and fluidly. It’s because the things that happen to the
characters are so awful. Oksanen describes the rapes and abuse quite
graphically, yet so matter-of-factly that it’s almost surreal; just, well, that
happened; let’s keep going. And I think this is because that’s how the people
in their situations- and there were and are many- have to deal with it. Just
keep going. No time for a screaming fit. These are horrors unimaginable to most
of us in the USA, and so many people- whole countries- have endured them. In my
opinion, this is a book that should be required reading at some level. There is
too much sex and violence for schools in the USA to accept, but it should at
least be required in college.
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