Stolen
Ratings2
Average rating4
15
Ratings2
Average rating4
SOON TO BE A NETFLIX FILM Louise Erdrich meets Jo Nesbø in this spellbinding Swedish novel that follows a young indigenous woman as she struggles to defend her family’s reindeer herd and culture amidst xenophobia, climate change, and a devious hunter whose targeted kills are considered mere theft in the eyes of the law. On a winter day north of the Arctic Circle, nine-year-old Elsa—daughter of Sámi reindeer herders—sees a man brutally kill her beloved reindeer calf and threaten her into silence. When her father takes her to report the crime, local police tell them that there is nothing they can do about these “stolen” animals. Killings like these are classified as theft in the reports that continue to pile up, uninvestigated. But reindeer are not just the Sámi’s livelihood, they also hold spiritual significance; attacking a reindeer is an attack on the culture itself. Ten years later, hatred and threats against the Sámi keep escalating, and more reindeer are tortured and killed in Elsa’s community. Finally, she’s had enough and decides to push back on the apathetic police force. The hunter comes after her this time, leading to a catastrophic final confrontation. Based on real events, Ann-Helén Laestadius’s award-winning novel Stolen is part coming-of-age story, part love song to a disappearing natural world, and part electrifying countdown to a dramatic resolution—a searing depiction of a forgotten part of Sweden.
Reviews with the most likes.
I did love the Millennium Trilogy when it was big, but haven't generally found myself otherwise drawn to Scandinavian literature. This book is in some ways representative of why that is: prose that feels flat, characters with limited emotional range, a certain kind of bleakness. I never know where to assess “blame” when I don't care for the writing style of a translated work, but I didn't find it compelling at all. The story itself also never really came together for me. A little girl, Elsa, who is Sàmi, witnesses a neighbor killing one of the family's reindeer one night, and the man threatens Elsa to remain silent. The family is part of a reindeer herding collective in their village in the traditional Sàpmi homeland of their people, and this killing is part of the overall hostility of their Swedish neighbors to the Sàmi and their way of life. The book follows the immediate aftermath of the reindeer poaching, and then switches perspective to ten years later, when Elsa is an adult who has returned to the village because she wants to continue her family's tradition as her life's work. The neighbor is still around, still threatening, still a problem. The story itself feels like it's checking off a list of issues the Sàmi face: despair/mental health challenges (particularly for the young men), police refusing to treat crimes against them with any real seriousness, tension from Swedes who believe that they receive undeserved benefits, climate change, the history of “nomad” schools which sought to forcibly integrate the indigenous population by cutting them off from their own families, languages, and traditions, tourists who treat them as living museum exhibits, as well as xenophobia and sexism within the Sàmi community itself. But that's what it feels like: box-checking. Elsa herself was also difficult character for me as a narrative center: as an adult, particularly, she's rigid and often self-righteous in a way that makes it hard to really connect with her. A nonfiction essay collection might have been the better route to take here.
