The Golden Deer
Vibrant and wild like a folk ballad, The Golden Deer is a compelling ‘Karelian Gothic’ novel inspired by epic folk tales. Braiding superstition, language, and illicit love with a sprinkling of mystical fantasy, Miina Supinen delivers an absorbing and spirited narrative in this, her fifth novel.
1880s Karelia: defying societal obligations to marry, Tilda Sommer instead leaves the comfort of her childhood home in Vyborg for a teacher’s seminary in a small town on the northern shores of the great Ladoga lake. There, Tilda quickly befriends another trainee teacher, a mysterious young Karelian woman, Jelena Päästäinen. Jelena is a ward of her uncle, Kiril, a shadowy businessman alleged to associate with dark forces. As an illicit love between the two women begins to bud, they investigate the suspicious death of a local maid and are drawn into a bigger adventure that sets them on a course towards danger.
Abundant with mysticism, joyful humour, and spellbinding history, The Golden Deer reinvents the historical novel, with coiled motifs reminiscent of The Essex Serpent.
Reading material:
- Finnish edition & PDF
- Sample translation tk
- Synopsis
info
Year of publication
2024
Original title
Kultainen peura
Page count
416
Original publisher
Otava
Original language of publication
Finnish
Reviews
Karjalainen newspaper
“Pages that ooze with joy.”
Savon Sanomat newspaper
“The Golden Deer shows that Miina Supinen deserves the magic cloak of a revered storyteller. She is clearly of Karelian storyteller stock.”
Anni Valtonen, Helsingin Sanomat newspaper
"The novel brings strong visions to life in an amusing way. (...) This is the kind of love that is rarely told in domestic historical novels. In this respect, too, Supinen writes a new kind of history. (...) In The Golden Deer, Supinen also creates a language of her own: its tone is old-fashioned, and it emerges, among other things, from word choice and word order. The language is vivid and beholds richness and fullness, joy, fury, wit, and festivity at the same time.
(...) At the same time as it praises the author's own family roots, this skilful and vivid novel celebrates the heritage of the Eastern culture that is a part of Finnishness. We must not forget it, even if we cannot cross the border. Instead, we must cherish the living Karelianism that we currently have within the borders of Finland, in North and South Karelia. (...) Such great timing to present this work now.
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Quote
“I’m quite sure that in the old days, women, too, used to have fun together. In Finnish novels, their lives are often portrayed as horrible,” Supinen says. [...] I jokingly invented a sort of genre of my own, ‘Karelian gothic’, she says, laughing. If a gothic novel can have lovely maidens and their very strange families and ghosts, why not a Karelian one, she muses.” - Helsingin Sanomat interviewing Miina Supinen