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Jump to navigationJump to searchA Winter Book by Tove Jansson (view source)
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Tove Jansson 's worldwide fame lasts on the Moomin books, written in the 1940s and later becoming television characters of the simplicity, naivety and sheer 'goodness' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. Simple drawings, simple stories, simple goodness. What is often forgotten outside of her native Finland is that she was a serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had a feeling for the natural world and the simple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the world might be.
Jansson's name came back to our attention in 2003 when "Sort of" Books had the wisdom to republish her Summer Book, which told of a six-year-old child's visit to the summer island of her aging artist grandmother.
There is more pain in this third of the book…but no less beauty. Philip Pullman describes Jansson's writing is "as smooth and odd and beautiful as sea-worn driftwood, as full of light and air as the Nordic summer." As I only have the work in translation…I hope it is true. I hope the originals are even more beautiful than these second hand versions…which themselves smell of the harsh bright light of the northern skies and let you taste the snows and fear the darkness.
Episodic. As beautiful, spiritual and hard to hold as light-play on the waves.
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[[Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
