Review of Sea Monsters by Edda Torpinen – A hypnotic story about the extinction of the sea cow | imaginary

IIn November 1741, Georg Wilhelm Steller, “theologian, naturalist, and curious man,” was shipwrecked on an island between Alaska and Russia. There he found, floating in the shallow water, a huge oriole, Hydrodamalis giga, She is nine feet tall and will soon be known as Steller’s Sea Cow. Having made it through the winter, largely by eating dugongs, the following August Steller and the remaining survivors of the Great Northern Expedition left the island. Within 30 years, the Steller’s sea cow had been hunted to extinction.

After describing these events, Finnish author Edda Torpiinen’s debut novel goes on to describe the lives of other historical figures, each of them affected in some way by the sea cow, now reduced to bones. There is Hampus Furuhjelm, the governor of Alaska, who is searching for a complete skeleton, and his sister Constance, who finds peace and intellectual independence among her taxidermy collection. Later, there are Hilda Olsson, a scientific illustrator, and John Gronvall, a specialist in bird egg reconstruction, tasked with preparing the remains of the sea cow for display.

Other things outside of the sea cow connect these characters. Both Stiller and Olson will long be remembered by the scientific nomenclature of the species, although only Stiller, whose desire for specimens is evident rather than the gentle process of clarification, gets his wish. Stiller and Gronvall are both embroiled in the mystique of a scientific body that, no matter how it may advance our understanding, necessarily entails destruction on one scale or another, while Constance and Olson both find their minds—and thus their potential contributions—rejected because of their gender. And in the background, all the while, there is a slowly developing scientific understanding that species extinction is possible, and that it could be driven by human action.

By any scale—chronological, geographical, or intellectual—this represents a lot of ground to cover, but Torpinen clearly does so effortlessly. She writes in the flowing present tense, moving seamlessly from one character to the next, gently but surely drawing us forward. The emotional details are cleverly presented, though they are in rather broad strokes – Stiller’s social inferiority to his ship’s officers, for example, and his frustration when they ignore his request for time to do his work: “What a laughable world it is,” he surveys the new world from his cabin, where all he can do is imagine the contents of these islands. The result is a book that can be read almost hypnotically. They are very decorated in Finland and it is easy to see why.

However, there is a downside to too much softness. The section on Hampus and Constance Furuhjelm, which also follows Hampus’ wife Anna, seems unfocused. When moving between the three, it is not clear where the story lies, perhaps because the material provided by real life often refuses to integrate. The sea cow bones are the thread that connects this story to the others, but Hampus has bigger things on his mind and Anna doesn’t even seem to notice. The solution might have been to give more space to imagined inner lives and desires—Constance in particular seems like an opportunity offered and then rejected—but that would have meant staying here, with these people, when the novel had elsewhere.

Hilda Olsson also passes quickly. The same can be said about thoughts that are raised and then abandoned. When her employer gives the sea cow skeleton to a colleague, the two have dinner to celebrate – but “there are differences between them, too: Valvon Nordmann believes that in order to fully understand an animal, one must examine it alive… But Bonsdorff shakes his head. The oxygen flowing through an animal’s cells does not change its structure.” Here we seem to have reached a fundamental point, but then, once the idea is put forward, we are moving again. The culpability of science and its practitioners in the extinction of species – and thus the tendency of humans to hide their own destruction behind ideas of progress – persists without ever being emphasized. It’s a bit like being on a gallery tour led by a guide who always knows the time.

Maybe this is unfair. “Sea Monsters” is undoubtedly very good – interesting; thoughtful; Beautifully written. It’s just that I felt like he also wanted something more. When Stiller goes out to observe the sea cow, it doesn’t seem like enough. “He must get closer, see its organs and bones, must measure it… Only by penetrating the surface can he understand the true nature of the sea cow.” I too would have liked time to see a little deeper.