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Baby Jane (2005)

Baby Jane is a candid triangle drama in which an awkward and incredibly tender love story plays out in the shadow of Piki’s illness, severe panic disorder.

What happened to Piki —The confident girl who always joked around, who hid everything that she wanted to be invisible inside? What happened to make the coolest girl in town a prisoner in her own home, on the verge of starving to death? In Baby Jane, the female narrator’s great love, Piki, isolates herself in her apartment. Suffering from severe anxiety hysteria, she is unable to deal even with the simplest of everyday chores. Piki’s illness is an unspeakable shame that she tries to hide even from those closest to her. Her girlfriends help and support her as much as they can, but the right words go in the wrong places, and the wrong ones in the right. The second novel from acclaimed Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen is a candid triangle drama in which an awkward and incredibly tender love story plays out in the shadow of Piki’s illness. Laughter, passion, jealousy and tears lead to irreparable loneliness and, at last, to resignation. Baby Jane is also a brave call to debate of themes barely treated in Finnish literature before; the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatric care, and how the Prozac generation got stuck in its pill addiction.

Rights sold to:

Finland (WSOY), Sweden (Bazar), Estonia (Tänapäev), Denmark (Rosinante), France (Stock), Norway (Oktober).

Denmark

Estonia

  • Estonian: Baby Jane

    Hardcover

    Translator: Tiina Pappel

    Publisher: Tänapäev (2010)

Finland

  • Finnish: Baby Jane

    Hardcover

    ISBN: 9510309664

    Publisher: WSOY (2005)

    Contact: Tuuli Leppänen

France

  • French: To be announced

    Publisher: Stock (-)

Norway

  • Norwegian: Baby Jane

    Hardcover

    ISBN: 978-82-495-0794-

    Translator: Morten Abildsnes

    Publisher: Oktober (2011)

    Contact: oktober@oktober.no

Sweden

  • Swedish: Baby Jane

    Hardcover

    ISBN: 9789170281044

    Translator: Janina Orlov

    Publisher: Bazar (2008)

  • Swedish: Baby Jane

    Pocket Book

    ISBN: 9789170282393

    Translator: Janina Orlov

    Publisher: Bazar (2010)

Reviews

  • The book is a furious examination of the off-hand Prozac prescriptions, where pills are seen as an easy way of shoving away psychiatric as well as societal disturbances. At the same time, it is a heartbroken portrayal of how the ones closest to you may hurt rather than help through their concerns. /…/ Oksanen’s prose is effective and flammable. The ending might feel excessively spectacular, but one can accept it in such a bloodily passionate and brutally confronting novel, which tears up infected questions without clinical pardon.
    — Norrköpings Tidningar (Sweden) (2007)
  • Her use of words and sentence structures are fantastic and [Sofi Oksanen’s] skillfulness makes me shiver. /…/ Baby Jane is a book you can’t put down, it’s wonderful…
    — Tidningen Kuriren (Sweden) (2007)
  • Like Stalin's Cows, Baby Jane is a well-written and well-composed whole. /…/ A solidly crafted novel with a contagious drive that urges the reader forward. The novel deals with themes that, even if they are not taboo – what is in today’s reality? – are seldom discussed in the way that this novel discusses them; without exclamation points, subtly and therefore also compellingly.
    — Lapin Kansa (Finland) (2005)
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