Autumn 2013

generation older. However, this book
probably wasn’t planned as a true life story
and it cannot be treated as Ehin’s official
biography. The first couple of pages make
us realise that the life of the author as a
real person is not its main point, although
the book seems to be about only one
character.
The book impresses us with its
disarming sincerity, confessionalism and
almost painful sincerity. In the mostly
plotless narrative, the experiences of the
narrator and other characters are equally
important, no matter how painful the
memories may be. It is not important
whether all of the smaller stories within the
larger narrative really took place as
described. The text overwhelms the
reader/spectator with personal details, at
the same time still having the effect of a
great generalisation: this is not the story of
a concrete person or a fictional character
but the story of a generation. This
generation was born in the 1970s, spent
their childhood in the Soviet time and
experienced the hardships of growing up
and adapting to the adult world in the first
years of independent statehood.
The author finds the recent past to be
as straightforwardly fascinating as the
more distant past. All moments of the past
look different when they are observed
against later experiences. Her own past,
her grandfather’s memories and the Ice
Age are all fused together into the same
research material, where the narrator is
tirelessly searching for her roots; she
continuously analyses the past and calls
her problem “a gap in history”, “the
syndrome of a rootless and historyless
child of a small town”, and the whole book
seems to be written to fill this gap.
Estonia’s recent past has been a large gap
for the author’s generation, because they
are lacking personal memories of this time
and the stories heard from their parents or
grandparents could not be told at school.
The narrator’s wish to get rid of her
“syndrome” can be seen in almost every
scene: by including the Ice Age in
Estonian history, in embroidering the
names of 35 foremothers onto her dress,
in the furious scraping off of the enamel
paint on the corridor walls, put there in
the Soviet time, or in visiting the ruins
that were all that remained of her
grandparents’ farm in Läänemaa.
Something has to be removed and
replaced by something else, and some
memories have to be recreated.
Despite the inclusion or exclusion of
history, the whole book is still a story of
one woman, a story about how she grew
up to be a woman and lived her woman’s
life. The story of roots cannot be
extracted from the story of the woman.
The narrator asks herself, “Could this
searching for roots, perhaps, be taken
as a run-up ... a run-up starting in the
past to give you strength and firmness to
speed up ... towards your own life and
love?”
Thus we can state that besides the gap
of history, the narrator is also experiencing
a gap in her life and love, but she can move
forward to fill this gap and even speed
towards it, having found strength from the
near and distant past. A woman’s heart, in
this text, is compared to an anvil that is
beaten with a blacksmith’s hammer, and it
is necessary to find the right blacksmith.
Although this motif can be seen as a hint
of a hard life, the narrator is still able to
find her blacksmith. The latest memories
described in the book seem to be happy
ones, although we do not get the feeling
that the book is a simple success story presented
as fiction. Many questions still need
answers and the woman’s journey of selfdiscovery
is not yet complete. At the end
of the book, the narrator admits that new
empty pages have appeared in the old and
previously filled diary: a life story cannot
end with the closing of the book. MV
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