A MAN, HIS HARE AND A BEAR
I was spellbound while reading this Finnish classic about one man's year with a hare.
We’re driving from Hanoi to Halong Bay in Vietnam, and I’m writing about the book I read during this past week. In the time I got between enjoying the sights and sounds of a country whose history is intertwined with that of my adoptive nation, it was almost impossible to get some reading in.
The premise of the Finnish novel by Arto Paasilinna (translated by Herbert Lomas) is unreal and quixotic. I doubt that any man, least of all a journalist, will find himself caring for a hare as if his own life depended on its life. Yet, that is strangely what transpires in this comical and often shocking novel about a gentleman and a hare.
Two harassed men were driving down a lane. The setting sun was paining their eyes through the dusty windscreen. It was midsummer, but the landscape on this sandy by-road was slipping past their weary eyes unnoticed; the beauty of the Finnish evening was lost on them both.
They were a journalist and a photographer, out on an assignment: two dissatisfied, cynical men, getting on for middle age. The hopes of their youth had not been realized, far from it. They were husbands, deceiving and deceived, stomach ulcers were on the way for both of them; and many other worries filled their days.
With works translated into 27 languages, the late Arto Paasilinni was a former journalist turned novelist with a broad readership outside of Finland. This lovable book set in Finland (and its border with Russia) is repetitive in places but it’s never boring because the adventures always hold an element of surprise.
In the guise of protagonist Vaatanen, Arto Paasilinni has created another Alice in Wonderland. Vaatanen is jaded when we meet him in the opening pages of the novel. In his new life—after he goes after the hare in the forest—Vaatanen finds himself caring for someone else. He also begins working with his hands. We watch an industrious man who builds, breaks, rescues, kills and survives. The greatest irony of it all is that he’s so alive that he isn’t even thinking about his own life anymore.
The work was heavy, but Vaatanen liked that: he knew he was getting stronger, and he wasn’t weighed down by the thought of having to do this work till the end of his life.
The Year of the Hare is ultimately about a man who discovers what it is to shake off all his fears. It’s also about losing the fear of losing the present. The animal, a “leveret” (a young hare in its first year.) is symbolic of what is at the core of all humans, that something we all seek, the thing that drives us to be who we really are. By the time the story ends, we’ve watched a desk-bound journalist like Vaatanen work at many demanding construction jobs. Vaatanen has conquered all his fears and the story ends on a suspenseful (yet comical) note.
Indeed Vatanen represents the male and adult version of Alice who chased the white rabbit in the hole. Just as Alice let herself be charmed and rattled in so many ways, Vaatanen, too, follows the hare to discover another world so very different from his own. In the process, he began tapping into his true self.
Alloting time for reading has been difficult on this packed trip. Yet books like this leave me with a smile at the end of every chapter. They’re a constant reminder that the journey itself is worth so much more than the destination.
