A Manifesto of Gratitude and Wonder
The 2025 programme of the prestigious local book series Loomingu Raamatukogu – a long-running Estonian book series founded in 1957 and renowned for introducing world literature and significant new Estonian writing – opens with Dance the Dust off the Floor (Tantsi tolm põrandast), Kairi Look’s first novel for adults following her success in the field of children’s literature. A tender and luminous coming-of-age tale, it follows Katariina, an Estonian woman born during the final years of the Soviet occupation, tracing her life from childhood into early adulthood. Opening with an epigraph from Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska – a quiet homage to persistence – the novel emerges as a celebration of forward motion, inner strength and hope, motifs echoed in its four brief ‘Beginnings’, one of which, tellingly, appears at the end of the book.
The novel begins with a sequence of short scenes narrated in the third person that offer a tender glimpse into the cosy domesticity of an Estonian home in the 1980s. The prose, impressionistic in tone, encourages the reader to feel rather than analyse or observe. On the micro level, Look avoids cause-and-effect logic. There is no analytical temperament here, no irony; those in search of naturalism will be disappointed. Instead, through a style laced with alliteration and a rudimentary, even chant-like syntax, the narrative reveals how young Katariina, guided by her religiously devout great-grandmother – a former paediatrician – learns about freedom through lullabies, ecstatic dance and imaginative play. She is read to tirelessly, in the hope of nurturing her inner growth and sense of optimism, the material ranging from Estonian folklore to the Moomins and to Astrid Lindgren.
So radiant is the maternal presence that even in the second part – also told in the third person and aiming at a broader level of reflection after the great-grandmother has died – the adolescent Katariina’s spirit remains unbroken despite the difficulties of puberty.
In the novel’s third part, a second-person narrative written with rare emotional immediacy, Katariina, now a young woman, studies medicine in a European metropolis while searching for her own rhythm. The narrative logic does not disappoint: she grows into a free-spirited traveller with a flair for the arts, finds love with ease and commits herself to the mystery of life’s dance. Eventually, Katariina faces a crisis and rises from the ashes in the course of a near-revelatory journey. Through movement – between places, languages and various forms of dance – she reaches what the authorial voice implies is an essential threshold. It is strength, will, her own game. Among the many metaphors for adjustment, the children’s swing stands out: someone beloved gives the child enough momentum, back and forth, until she is ready to take over using her own body – able both to control the dangerous speed and to launch herself from stillness, again and again, to find fresh meaning in every ascent.
It seems such strength is only possible when someone has loved the child into being, instilling the belief that ‘everything is here and everything is now’. A novel that tenderly cherishes such primal affection, Dance the Dust off the Floor reads as a manifesto for gratitude and wonder.
Merlin Kirikal