Big Wet Secret
“The television is as clear at night as the sky during the day and exactly the same colour.”
Eastern Helsinki in the 1990’s: A seven-year-old boy stays home alone while his single mother works weekend shifts in a hospital. His alcoholic father only occasionally shows up but is not allowed in. He picks up the boy’s Playstation to pawn it.
The boy spends his nights watching age-inappropriate Hollywood movies from the ’90s, numbing his loneliness with candy. He is embarrassed by his situation and doesn’t want to share it with anyone. Instead, he prays.
“I try to pray but I can’t get the right words together, I accidentally become rude. I pray let me and Mom live forever, or you will lose all your power. […] I feel like I can hear God swallowing. Maybe I’m the lump in his throat.”
The boy’s father passes away, he becomes a teenager and falls in love with one of his classmates, The Athlete, who, unlike him, comes from a wealthy family. The school is situated in eastern Helsinki and surrounded by suburbs with great inequality in income, only referred to by postal codes. The school kids, all anonymous and only known by epithets, come from very different backgrounds. Despite of his feeling of otherness among his well-off classmates, the boy makes friends and, with them, gets acquainted with alcohol and sex. He quickly develops an ever-growing interest in tobacco, booze and men.
Niko Hallikainen’s second novel is a masterful depiction of class differences, adolescent intensities and insecurities, awakening homosexuality and devastating alcoholism. Hyper-realistic in its detail, the novel is an intense, violent, corporeal and sensual story of growing up poor in the 1990’s eastern Helsinki. The anonymous narrator’s voice, merging the boy protagonist and the adult he later became, is stunningly achieved: natural, effortless and believable.
info
Year of publication
2023
Original title
Suuri märkä salaisuus
Page count
392
Original publisher
Otava
Original language of publication
Finnish
Reviews
Helsingin Sanomat
"Hallikainen’s debut was a linguistic delight, but this novelty takes richness even further. In the work coloured by class sorrow, there is a certain joy: it is uncompromising in language, structurally sound yet free. The narrator is electric, a realm of imagination in a world of twigs, or as he puts it: ‘Imagination is all I have’. "
Helsingin Sanomat
"Big Wet Secret has its own rich linguistic world where the virtues of prose, such as observation, character, and an understanding of the world's structure, combine with a sense of irony. The book is excessive in its linguistic framework; the narrator is serious, solemn, and humorous. Condensation, pursuit of the beyond, addressing angels, grand daydreams, and contemplating death are among his abilities."
Suomen Kuvalehti
"Hallikainen belongs to those contemporary writers whose characters look at the world without illusions and a little impatient."
Tuijata
"Hallikainen's novel is skillful and unique, much like Édouard Louis’ in its class consciousness. (…) An uncompromising, vibrant, and even cruel portrayal stays in the mind, continuing to revolve there. I listened to the book read by the author himself, and it didn't detract from the power of the vivid and descriptive language. This might be material for book award nominations this year."
Mesta
"One essential feature of the book is its poetic nature (…) Poetic language works well in describing the chaotic nighttime gatherings of young people. It conveys rapidly changing emotions, brokenness, and takes the reader deep inside, very close. At times, the narration is almost magical or surreal, as some things take on exciting and unexpected shapes due to the poetic language. The style works brilliantly in this context."
Prisma Literature Prize Jury
"Suuri märkä salaisuus is a poetic novel about Finland in the 1990s. Eastern Helsinki gets its own flavour and voice in this beautiful and raw coming-of-age story that follows a boy growing up with a single mother. Niko Hallikainen’s novel is a queer portrayal of class divisions and the brutality of capitalism that we have longed to read."
Toisinkoinen blog
"In the novel Hallikainen has managed to combine the everyday reality that everyone recognises from their own life but also introduces new perspectives with a narrative that keeps you hooked with its surprising depictions and poetic boldness. The language of The Big Wet Secret is very straightforward and shameless as it beholds from the beginning until the very end an peculiar atmosphere that both romantizises and gives a grotesque impression of the lives of the characters in the novel. The language is diverse but steady."
Author Helmi Kekkonen
"Niko Hallikainen's second novel is a breathtaking coming-of-age story, a wondrous combination of linguistic fury and complete control over it. The text and story flow from the pages like a physical dimension, without forgetting what this is all about: fiction.
The rhythm of the narrative, the choice of words, narrative voice and its shifts in register, the richness in detail and its sensuality create an explosive, almost hypnotic entirery that remains in the author's grip from beginning to end."
Awards & Nominations
Awards
Kalevi Jäntti Prize
2023
Nominations
Prisma Literature Prize – Nordic Work of the Year
2023
Toisinkoinen Literature Prize
2023
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