Summary Of Mikael Niemi's Popular Music From Vittula

Mikael Niemi uses his personal novel, Popular Music from Vittula to inform readers not only on what everyday life was like growing up in Pajala, Sweden, but also how the Second World War and ideas of communism affected his small hometown. Throughout the novel, he goes in order of maturation stages, starting the book in the beginning of the sixties as a young boy, and ending the book as a teenager in the middle to late seventies. He uses his personal experiences to create a sense of imagery, making the book very relatable to adolescents and young adults that have a love for life and nature. He also focuses greatly on key elements that played major roles throughout his childhood such as friendship, manhood, religion, adventure, and the value of life itself. Niemi attempts to describe in great detail the aftermath of communism and World War Two throughout his novel. It can be assumed that a major theme in the novel is that war effects everyone, including the places most people tend to overlook on a map. Niemi excels at providing all different viewpoints on communism, including the opinions of communists and anticommunists that he encounters throughout

While it is always very important to provide details when writing, he tends to be a little too wordy and at times repetitive. He also makes a lot of references to historical figures without providing background knowledge for his audience, leading them to doing their own research. Overall, it is very hard to critique this novel negatively, due to the fact that it is so well written and has such an amazing story line. This is a book that once someone starts reading it, they cannot put it down. Another thing that Niemi excels on is ending his chapters with cliff hangers, making the novel exciting and interesting. He always ends his chapters with a buildup of anxiety, and then he starts the next chapter with something completely