We'll cooperate with anyone who puts us safely to bed when the pines start creaking, heavy with old snow and the silent white foxes that watch our bedroom windows at night. Bring our sleep aids. Pull the blackout shades. Lock us in. We'll never be tempted out of the building again. We belong in these reliably muffled rooms, and we are happy. I did not plan to buy this book: I had never heard of it, or the author, until I came across the novel at a bookstore. The setting of the novel just sounded so bizarre, so unusual, that I had to read it. Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto is an American author's debut novel set in a convalescent hospital called Suvanto somewhere on the coast of Finland in the early 1900s. Apparently, Maile Chapman spent a Fulbright year in Finland, visiting early 20th century hospitals and doing research for the novel. Suvanto, in the novel, is certainly a strange setting. It is a hospital, or sanatorium, mostly for Finnish and Swedish-speak...