Ten Past One, Please!

I have a request of the publishing universe: Would someone please translate and publish Ann-Helén Laestadius’s young adult novel Tio över ett into English?

I kept thinking that as I was reading the book in Swedish, its original language, after it came my way through a friend who had met the author. A year later, I still think about it. A story that sticks like that is a story with resonance.

The title translates as Ten Past One. That's the time Maja sets her clock for each night. She needs to be awake to make sure she and her family survive the nighttime blasting that occurs deep below ground in the enormous, state-owned LKAB mine beneath Kiruna. This actual mine in far northern Sweden, which has operated for over 120 years, is the largest iron ore mine in Europe and employs some 4,000 people. Unfortunately, the enormity of the mining activity is causing cracks at ground level that threaten the homes, roads, infrastructure, and safety of residents. Portions of the town are in the process of being moved or the families relocated to New Kiruna, several miles away.

Maja’s father, like so many residents of Kiruna, works in the mine. He earns a good living. But Maja suffers from increasing anxiety, mostly irrational but also not entirely unreasonable. She endures the typical stresses of adolescence — friendships, school and peer pressures, family disagreements, a serious crush — with an added layer of genuine fear about change and the potential for impending disaster.

The setting is intrinsically interesting but Maja’s voice gives life to the story. She is so emotionally vulnerable, so frank, and struggles so valiantly to find her way through her troubles, I couldn’t help but empathize. As she navigates the unwelcome changes around her, she comes to grips with realities of politics and economy, family and class differences, prejudice against the Sami, and her own power to be resilient.

 

There’s actually no need to take my word for it that the book is worth translating. In 2016, Tio över ett won the August Prize for Swedish children’s literature, as well as the Norrland Literature Prize in 2017. Laestadius, a journalist by trade, has written several YA novels and two picture books, Pimpelfiske (2018) (Ice Fishing) and Vinterkväll (2019) (Winter Evening) with illustrator Jessika Berglund. Her first adult novel, Stöld (Theft), has just been released.

The Smell of Other People's Houses

We’ve all heard the saying “It takes a village to raise a child.” In Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock’s new young adult novel, The Smell of Other People’s Houses, that village is 1970s Fairbanks, Alaska. The story interweaves the lives of an extensive cast of characters, connected by blood, friendship, and circumstance, as narrated by four teens.

Each of these teens has problems – mostly big ones. Ruth’s father is dead, her mother “gone,” so she and her younger sister Lily live with their strict, emotionally distant grandmother. Dora, from an alcoholic, abusive home, wants to feel part of a family where people like each other and she can sleep safely at night. Alyce, whose parents are divorced, can’t bring herself to disappoint her commercial-fisherman father by asking to skip part of the fishing season in Southeast Alaska to pursue her dream of dancing. And Hank shoulders the responsibility for himself and his two younger brothers as they decide to escape a dismal situation at home since their father died.

Underlying all these characters’ personal difficulties is Hitchcock’s awareness of the effects of poverty, racism, and stereotypes. Some harsh words are spoken. And yet The Smell of Other People’s Houses is anything but depressing. The novel is not so much about the characters’ problems but about how they live through the tough parts, finding hope in small moments, holding on to whatever they can find -- and how people help each other to do that, sometimes in surprising ways.

And that is what’s finally uplifting about this book – all those people, whether Alaska Native or non-native, young or old, caring enough about each other to help each other through.

Having grown up in Fairbanks, commercial fished, and worked for public radio, Hitchcock portrays Alaska with all its warts, charms, and eccentricities. Not surprisingly, the power to nurture and heal found in a relationship with the land, through traditional subsistence and small-scale commercial fishing, is a theme throughout the novel. The author’s heavy reliance on synchronicity sometimes stretches credulity — but I found myself ready to overlook this fault in exchange for hopeful outcomes for these young people I’d come to care about.

The voices of the teens are compelling, forthright and distinct. Some may object to the harsh depiction of Dora’s parents, with no explanation of how they reached such a sorry state. Perhaps more could have been done to flesh out those two characters. But overall the author represents a rich variety of Alaskans with insight and affection, without sugarcoating the very real problems teens face. Whether you’re 16 or 60, if you’ve lived in Alaska any length of time – even if you didn’t grow up in 1970s Fairbanks – you’ll recognize familiar people, places, and ways of being in The Smell of Other People’s Houses.

For more information about the book and the author, check out her website.