The Rabbit Back Literature Society is a novel written by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen. When I originally bought the novel, I did not realize it was written by a Finnish author, if I had, I would have bought the book in Finnish. Instead, I purchased the English translation. If you are interested in reading it in Finnish, it can be found with the title Lumikko ja yhdeksän muuta.

Isn't this book just gorgeous?

The Rabbit Back Literature Society is set in the small town of Rabbit Back. The main character Ella Milana has recently moved back to her childhood home to take care of her elderly father and to work at the local high school as a Finnish language and literature teacher. Life in Rabbit Back seemingly revolves around their mysterious writer-in-residence Laura White, who runs a literature society in which she trains aspiring authors. Ella submits a short story to the local newspaper, and it gets published. Laura spots Ella's talent and offers her a spot as the tenth and final member of the Rabbit Back Literature Society. On the night Ella is supposed to officially join the society and meet Laura White, Laura disappears seemingly into thin air. As Ella begins to dig deeper into Laura's disappearance, she finds out disturbing details about the society, including their unsettling Game and the fact that there had been a previous tenth member before Ella.

The novel focused quite a lot on the Game, which is probably why I found it to be so disturbing. Members of the society where allowed to ambush each other after 10pm in order to ask each other exceedingly personal questions. The rules of the game allow members to use a drug they call "yellow" to get each other to relax, thus being more likely to answer honestly. They are even allowed to use physical violence to get honest answers to the questions they have asked. This Game is disturbing for the adult characters, but becomes even more so when you realize that White has been encouraging them to play some version of this Game since childhood. The characters in the novel attempt to excuse the Game by stating that they use the material gained during a round in their stories.

The novel is not meant to stay within the realms of realism, however. Personally, I would file it under the catch-all genre of magical realism. Various phantoms haunt the citizens of Rabbit Back and a disease is spread through the books in town, changing the plots of the books. Both of these examples would be classified as fantasy, but when the rest of the novel is fairly well set in reality, the genre of magical realism seems most astute. I have recently become a big fan of magical realism, so it was a pleasant surprise when The Rabbit Back Literature Society seemed to fit into the genre as well.

I know that Jääskeläinen has written more books, but The Rabbit Back Literature Society is his only work which has been translated into English. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy (or magical realism!) Now, I need to get my hands on his other books in Finnish.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

-Laura