Purchase
LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR
By: Pirkko Saisio
Two Lines Press
November 2024
On Sale: November 12, 2024
312 pages
ISBN: 1949641716
EAN: 9781949641714
Kindle: B0CZ7Y6VJB
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Literature and Fiction Literary | LGBTQ
For readers of Eileen Myles and Patti Smith, Lowest Common Denominator is an ecstatic coming-of-age novel by the Finlandia-prize-winning author of The Red Book of Farewells
Writing in the wake of her father’s death, the narrator of Pirkko Saisio’s autofictional novel (translated from Finnish by Mia Spangenberg) transports us to the 1950s Finland of her youth, where she navigates life as an only child of communist parents. Convinced she will grow up to become a man, a young Saisio keeps trying and failing to meet the expectations of the adults around her. Writing with her trademark wit and style, each formative experience—with the Big Bad Wolf, a bikini-clad circus announcer, and Jesus Christ “who has a beard like a man but a skirt and long hair like a woman”—drives her further and further from her family and others. Struggling to understand her place in the world around her, it’s in language that she discovers a refuge and a way to be seen at last.
| 
© 2003-2026