Troll

A Love Story

By: Johanna Sinisalo

Narrated by: J. Paul Guimont

Everyone has their rough nights, but things have clearly taken a turn for the surreal when Angel, a young photographer, finds a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a young troll. Trolls are known in Scandinavian mythology as wild beasts, like the werewolf, but this troll is just a small, wounded creature. Angel decides to offer it a safe haven for the night. In the morning Angel thinks he dreamed it all. But he finds the troll alive, well, and drinking from his toilet. What does one do with a troll in the city?

Angel begins researching frantically. Angel searches the Internet, folklore, nature journals, and newspaper clippings, but his research doesn't tell him that trolls exude pheromones that have a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. As Angel's life changes beyond recognition, it becomes clear that the troll is familiar with the man's most forbidden feelings and that it may take him across lines he never thought he'd cross. A novel of sparkling originality, Troll is a wry, peculiar, and beguiling story of nature and man's relationship to wild things and of the dark power of the wildness in ourselves.

©2000 Johanna Sinisalo. Translation copyright 2003 by Herbert Lomas. Original title and lyrics from the song Päivänsäde ja menninkäinen composed by Reino Helismaa. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Uneven and unfun

The style is poetic and introspective. And it deals with dark motivations. I enjoyed the lore and weird mythology that is interspersed. But almost all of the characters are bleak and annoyingly serious. The ending, however, was cool enough for me to forgive some of its flaws.

Harlequin for gay dudes

It was okay. It uses a lot of extra-plottory references to build the world, which pulls you out... but other than them, it was a great book!

Problems with narrator and Story

I assumed this book would be more in exploration of humanities and nature's relationship and the disturbances of it. However, this book is more of a character's development as they take care of a troll. In the book the character gives into his perversion and thinks of the troll during his sexual encounters. I think this book could have exploded the less explicit affairs of the main character. I also have a problem with Mikael's molestation of the troll, he seems to try to fight his pedophilic and beastialitic sexual wants and fails.

Also the narrator gasps between his lines, and is quite noticeable. However you'll get used to it within about a half hour.

Disappointed

I had higher hopes for this book, but it was a bit of a bore

It ducked

It was boring. Wish I could get my money back I wasted about an hour on this that I will never get back