Purge

by Sofi Oksanen

http://www.sofioksanen.com/books/purge/

Purge, by Sofi Oksanen

Present at our meeting on June 19 were Anne, Vibeke, Paulette, myself (Lisa) and our gracious host, Christa. 

Everyone agreed that this was a book well worth reading.  It concerns the tough issues of trafficking and the forced Sovietization of the Baltics in great depth.  Purge is the story of the relationship between two women, one elderly and one young ,who find themselves thrown together in a desperate situation in which both are feeling threatened, the younger one for her life, and the elder one for her home. 

The story opens in 1992 in the simple Estonian country house of an elderly woman named Aliide Truu.   A young Russian woman, Zara, has turned up in the yard of the house in a totally disheveled and agitated state.  We learn that Zara was forced into prostitution after traveling to Germany in hopes of working to better her life.   She desperately needs help as she is fleeing from the clutches of her captors from whom she has just escaped.   Aliide takes her in, even though she is suspicious of strangers.  She feels strangely protective, especially as she discovers that Zara speaks Estonian in a dialect from Aliide’s youth.  Both women are completely guarded -- Aliide, not convinced that the girl isn’t part of an elaborate scheme to rob or harm her, and Zara, worried that if she reveals her true situation, it might harm her chances of getting help.  We learn that there are actual family ties between the two women, but the situation isn’t resolved until the very end of the book.  Oksansen spins a saga spanning several generations, bouncing back and forth between 1950, during the Soviet occupation of Estonia, and 1992 after it has regained its independence.     

Oksanen’s style is completely engaging.  The story flows as the past is revealed through a series of flashbacks.  We learn of Aliide’s youth and of her relationship with her seemingly perfect older sister.  They had fallen in love for the same man, who married the sister.  Estonia is occupied by the Germans and then annexed by the Soviet Union.  The Red army is ruthless, intimidation and rape are common tools of oppression, and anyone under suspicion is “purged” to the Siberian gulags.   It is against this back drop that Oksanen takes us even deeper into the central character of Aliide and her relationships -- with her sister, with Hans Pekk, the sister’s husband, with Martin Truu, the party official whom she marries, and with her niece and her daughter.

A review of the book in the Economist spoke of this being a story about people having to make impossible choices.  Everyone in our group felt affected by this book, some very personally.

We discussed that the even though the book is about people making impossible choices, it is also about people who use positions of power as an excuse to harm others.  We saw behavior that was empowered first by the ideology of the communists and second, by the power of money.  We discussed the vulnerabilities of women, especially in time of war.  Oksanen examines how women behave when they lose control of their lives and how they can betray even the people closest to them, and how acts of pure survival can become acts of selfishness and unkindness.  

L.V.