Riikka Pulkkinen
Translated by: Tabatha Leggett
Seventeen-year-old Philippa Laakso was many things to many people. Caring and selfish. Kind to some, cruel to others. And now, she was dead.
When seventeen-year-old Philippa’s body is found in her front yard, the police launch an investigation. Everyone close to Philippa is questioned: The elderly neighbor who discovered her body, who kept confusing Philippa with his late wife. The best friend, who hoards a secret stash of objects she’d stolen from Philippa over the years. The ex-boyfriend, still reeling from their sudden break-up months before. The woman who features, enraged, in some of the strange videos Philippa filmed on her beloved Olympus PEN camera. The older men she’d been meeting via a dating app.
Each tells a different story: she was a confidant, a fantasy, a temptation, a problem, a mystery, a mirror. But did any of them truly know her?
Enchantment is a spellbinding literary mystery that explores the uneasy terrain of girlhood, where one is always being watched, shaped, and judged by others. In it, Riikka Pulkkinen (called the “Finnish Joyce Carol Oates” by Livres Hebdo) weaves a complex story of power and identity, and the fragile boundary between truth and fiction.
