DOG PARK

A Ukrainian woman strives to rise to the top of the international fertility racket but miscalculates how close she can skirt criminality without becoming either a target or a criminal herself.

We first see Olenka, the narrator, in 2016 in a Helsinki dog park, where she’s observing a certain young family. The timeline pleats and folds in on itself according to Olenka’s memories and fears. Olenka is from Snizhne, a polluted town in eastern Ukraine, where most inhabitants earn a subsistence living. Many work in illegal, unregulated coal mines known as kopankas, where accidents run rampant, which is ostensibly how her beloved father died. Olenka and her widowed mother were reduced from relatively comfortable circumstances to living with relatives engaged in the lower echelons of opium farming. Now, Daria, a former colleague, has joined Olenka in Helsinki, much to Olenka’s chagrin. The two were involved in an outwardly legitimate, extremely profitable fertility institute which furnished egg donors and surrogates to the exacting specifications of wealthy clients—including the dog park family. Both women—whose fathers were friends in Snizhne days—saw fertility work as their main chance to escape poverty. Olenka is in Finland under an assumed name, and Daria’s arrival poses a threat: If Olenka’s whereabouts were known, she would be in mortal danger, even from the man she loves, whom she addresses as “you” in incessant mental conversations. The thriller aspect sneaks up on the reader as information is tortuously eked out about Olenka’s at-first unwitting ties to a clan of ruthless oligarchs. Oksanen subtly but viscerally depicts jeopardy and romance without resorting to graphic descriptions. As suspense mounts, occasionally at the expense of coherence, we learn much about the precarious state of post-Soviet Ukraine and its chaotic economy, in which gangsterism rules, violence is celebrated, and exploitation of women is big business.

A dystopian novel that seems all too real.