Moominvalley in November, Tove Jansson (365 Books, Day 193)

[rushthatspeaks]

I missed this one somehow when I was first reading the Moomintroll books (... last year). It was nice to see a Moomin book I'd never heard of in the library, a present from the universe.

At any rate, as is usual in the Moomin books, there are a great many creatures, who are not quite human, living in a valley somewhere very far northerly in Scandinavia and having the sort of lives that... well. I said to sovay earlier, "It's as if Ingmar Bergman had gone in for children's books in a big way," and she said, "Including the bit where it's not actually depressing even though it seems as though it ought to be." Yes. And including the thing where everything that happens is just slightly to the left of whatever you actually expected to have happen.

This is the one where the Moomintrolls have gone away for a while, and it's about the people who move into their house in their absence, the Fillyjonk who is recovering from nearly having fallen off the roof of her own house, the Hemulen who wants some excitement in his life and who wants to go out sailing but is too afraid to, the small child who may or may not be actually human who is imagining or else conjuring a giant creature in the back yard... Oh, and of course Snufkin, who wants to write a song.

And all of the people, except Snufkin (because Snufkin is best), remember the time when the Moomins were home as something of an Eden, a perfect time when everything went right, and they want it back, only they can't remember any of the details about it. Gradually, of course, it becomes obvious that things are going just as well as they ever have, Moomins or not. There's a very complex web of desire and absence and melancholy and not-loneliness and people not quite understanding each other at the heart of this book, and of course since it is Tove Jansson it is all in a story that could I think be read happily and with understanding by a six-year-old.

This is not my favorite Moomin book, because nothing will ever beat the eerie gorgeousness of Moominland Midwinter. But it is very fine, and I am so glad there was more when I had thought there wasn't.

I need to get hold of her adult novels, which are being reprinted as part of the New York Review of Books' efforts to brighten and improve the universe by reprinting things like T. H. White's book on falconry and the work of Adolfo Bioy Casares, so there is hope that I can find them eventually. Blessings on the NYRB, for somebody over there is psychic about what I would like to read in a way I have traditionally only associated with Virago Press: and the NYRB stuff occasionally actually turns up in bookstores.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Z had these read to him as a four year old and adored all of them but this one. He re-read them himself frequently, all but this one. When I asked him about it he said "It's too sad". So it may be too sad for small children who strongly identify with Moomintroll.

(And now I think about it, A does somewhat resemble the snork maiden. I must say this to carandol and marylace but possibly not to Z!)

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

It was too sad for me, too. I want to reread it all the same, but I think I'll still find the yearning slightly too painful for me, as I did when I was a kid.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I shall keep that in mind around small children.

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

I LOVE this book--even as much as Moominland Midwinter, although I agree that's a stranger and more mystic book. I love the way every creature is utterly what it is, and is accepted as such. I love the way it reflects the restless discontent I feel every autumn as the days draw in. We were in Finland last summer, guests at their SF convention. Several of the people we met there said they'd read November when they were little, but didn't like it until they were grown. Maybe you have to be middle-aged to appreciate acceptance and accomodation.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I love the way you know that the Moomins are off having pretty much exactly the same emotional experience on their island.

I cannot figure out what I'd have thought of this book as a child. I simply can't imagine.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Hang on, Tove Jansson wrote adult novels? Great!

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

I own three used copies. I wasn't crazy about Sun City, but The Summer Book was pretty good (and maybe would be a good paired reading with L'Engle's The Summer of the Great Grandmother, which I don't think I've read). I paid a small fortune for Sculptor's Daughter, but I haven't read it yet.

Have you seen her illustrations for The Hobbit? I don't know that they match my idea of the book, but I still like them.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Yes! Somebody at Boskone once did a slide show of them. They're not MY Bilbo and dwarves and Gandalf, but they're very cool nonetheless. I can't get enough of her art style.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Her Lewis Carroll illos are pretty damn awesome, too.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I liked November as a kid, although Toft's maybe-conjuring of the creature kind of freaked me out a little, and I wished for the Moomins in it. The ones that freaked me out were Moominsummer Madness, because I think it never hit me that they were in a theatre (and I also read it in the middle of the Serengeti, where we didn't have any), and anything that dealt with the Hattifatteners.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Harvard Book Store (bless them) has what looks like most of NYRB's titles on their remainder shelves (including Jansson's The Summer Book, which I bagged). Raven Books has quite a few. Bring an extra suitcase when you come.

Nine

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I intend to, having discovered that you can't get 'em down here for love or money.

[pameladean]

Oh, yes, the NWRB line rocks! They reprinted Barbara Sleigh's Carbonel books. Even the third bad one, which I wanted but didn't want.

P.

[pameladean]

Ack, NYRB. Sheesh.

New Work? New Washington? New Warblers?

P.

[larryhammer]

New Writers, presumably.

---L.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Necessary Words.