PositiveAsymptoteOksanen deftly interweaves the lives of Ukrainian women in the mid-2000s, a happy Finnish family in 2016, and readers in 2021 through overlaps of intentions, memories, and citizenship ... How Olenka’s plans are laid out, at times successfully and at others catastrophically, keeps the narrative going until the end. There’s not a single moment when the novel leaves readers sure of what’s happened, happening, or going to happen. At the end of almost every chapter begins a new suspense, usually marked by Olenka’s gradual revelation of an unmentioned aspect of the main narrative. These mini-plot twists—a death, a birth, or a warped relationship—turn the pages to the very end ... This suspense adds to the emotional burden readers must bear from the beginning as this likely dystopia unfolds. Through the tales of the dead, the unborn, and want-to-be mothers, Oksanen’s robust storytelling brings to the fore in this ruminative thriller the capitalization of women’s bodies, on either side of supply and demand, happening then and now—in 2006, in 2016, and 2021.
