Loving You, Loving Me

Miehiä ja mielenrauhaa

An irresistibly flirtatious feelgood novel about taking life by the horns and becoming the main protagonist of your own life.

Tuuli, a visual arts teacher in a Finnish high school, couldn’t feel worse about having turned forty. As her teacher colleagues count down the days to retirement, recently separated Tuuli turns to a dating app in the hope of finding someone who’ll give her a new lease of life. The only problem is, the only matches left are former students of hers.

Plagued with boredom and on the brink of a midlife crisis, Tuuli decides to pack her bags and head to Barcelona for a two-month-long summer holiday. Tuuli loves everything about the city: the food, the architecture, the language, not to mention the men…

Starting as she means to go, Tuuli vows to go on as many dates as she can possibly squeeze in. That’s how she meets Max, a New Age ‘masculinity teacher’ who sweeps her off her feet. But when Max breaks Tuuli’s heart and turns out to be just like all the men back home, Tuuli decides she’s had enough. Why does a woman’s happiness always have to depend on a man, anyway? There’s only one thing for it: Tuuli seeks out an ashram and consults a bona fide guru.

A deliciously fizzing novel about a woman who opens her mind to a journey, only to wind up on an altogether different kind of retreat. With its exuberant combination of excitement, heartbreak, and one hell of a lot of soul-searching, Marja Kangas delivers another side-splitting and relatable novel. Imagine a feelgood version of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild meets Elísabet Benavent’s novels and you have LOVING YOU, LOVING ME.

Marja Kangas (b. 1974) is a drama teacher and writer, originally from the Finnish town of Kuopio, though she divides her time now between Barcelona and Turku, Finland. She also teaches creative writing and takes great pleasure in having a good, long cry followed by a good laugh—often to herself first. The Only Way is Up, her debut novel won WSOY’s 2019 writing competition to find the next, new voice in commercial fiction, beating 788 other entries. LOVING YOU, LOVING ME is her second novel.

Material

Finnish edition
English sample translation
Synopsis