From Estonia With Love

The title of Rein Raud's "The Death of the Perfect Sentence" derives from a passage ending with "Then he whispered the perfect sentence into her ear." We are not told what the sentence is but we are given a moment to ponder it because the very next page reads "This page intentionally left blank." Based on the preceding romantic set-up, the most likely guess would be "I love you."

That is a good example of the type of meta-fiction that the novel contains. Author Raud regularly makes interjections into the text, sometimes writes page-long footnotes commenting on the action and providing context or just stops the action entirely to make you take a pause to think. The style won't necessarily appeal to everyone, but does have its charms. Certainly the context is necessary for those who aren't familiar with the history of the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. But those who are familiar with it will still find quirky bits of nostalgic dark humour along the way. Case in point, remember those bitter anecdotes about the incompetence of the Soviet regime? There is one I never heard before:

Winnetou gathers his tribe and says: "I've got one piece of good news and one piece of bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"
"The bad news, oh Winnetou."
"The bad news is that we've used up all our food, so we have to start eating bison shit."
The tribe grows despondent and starts to wail, then one of them asks what the good news is.
"The good news is that I know a place where we can get hold of bison shit."

As Raud then observes, people who lived under the Soviet regime would totally understand this bitter humour and know that it was a joke about their own system.

Raud takes us back to those times of hope which existed alongside the continuing paranoia of a totalitarian regime that many did not know was teetering on the point of collapse. He sets this all up with a group of Estonian dissidents acting as an amateur spy network to smuggle information to the west and builds quite a lovely bitter-sweet romance story into the mix. It truly takes us back to when we lived in interesting times.

Trivia that perhaps only an Estonian might recognize
On pg. 164 A Soviet intelligence officer suggests that agent files should be seeded with Estonian nationalists in a disinformation campaign: "You could start with that damned Lennart Meri."
On pg. 167 the description of the files includes: "a photo of a man who was getting on a bit, with a long face and thinning hair, and a big hearty smile," which is a good description of former Estonian President Lennart Meri.

Links
The book's official publication date is set for June 21, 2017. but pre-orders made directly at the publisher's web-store at https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/bookshop-changelings/the-death-of-the-perfect-s... will be shipped as of April 2017.

#ThereIsAlwaysOne (or Two)
Errata
pg. 167 "the person sitting the other side of the table" should presumably be "the person sitting on the other side of the table."
pg.186 "Properity" should presumably be "Prosperity." ( )