Enchantment

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 the yard outside her home, the police launch an investigation. Everyone close to her is questioned: The elderly neighbour 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 weaves a complex story of power, identity, and the fragile boundary between truth and fiction.

Translated by: Tabatha Leggett