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I have noticed that Tove Jansson's books seem to take place either in summer or in winter: summer at its most exuberantly summery, winter at its most mysterious. The principal exception I can think of, Moominvalley in November, is an odd book all round and sees autumn as a transition more than as a season of its own. This may have something to do with the essential Scandinavian nature of Jansson-- hers is a world where seasons are sharp, clear, and noticeable, and where they substantially affect one's way of living more than they do in, say, most of the U.S.
This is a winter book.
In a village so small that everyone lives not only in one another's pockets but in one another's daydreams, Katri lives with her brother, Mats. Their mother died in the fall. Katri quit her job at the only store soon after, because the storekeeper wanted her. Katri is intelligent, brutally honest, and disliked, a woman as hard on herself as on everybody else, who doesn't name her dog, who can do anything with bookkeeping, who has yellow eyes and wears a wolfskin collar. The children throw snowballs at her window and chant 'witch' though she is only twenty-five. Katri would do anything for her brother, who is young and underestimated by everyone, and dreams.
Up the hill in a decaying family mansion lives Anna Aemalin, old and alone, an illustrator of books for small children which sell hugely and are greatly critically acclaimed except for the rabbits: they have too many cliched little bunnies in them. The village calls her house the rabbit house. Anna is wealthy.
Katri knows both what she wants and, she believes, how to get it, but it isn't that simple. Jansson's books are never simple. Neither Katri nor Anna are victim or villain. They are two people whose proximities, whose enforced intimacies and non-intimacies, make clear to each that she is the opposite of the other, and that her own beliefs are not exactly working. Over the course of this deceptively simple novel, wrapped in the appearance of non-plot, shot with winter light, they ambiguously break and heal each other.
In the foreword it is mentioned that Jansson found this novel the most difficult of her books to write. Understandable, but it doesn't show at all. As with much of her work, this is as all-of-a-piece and flowing as a rock from the bottom of a river. The details are precise and sometimes funny, the lists of silly things people write to Anna to ask her about merchandising (she wonders desperately why they want to put a noisemaker in the little rubber bunnies when rabbits do not make sounds except when screaming), the way Katri demolishes the storekeeper in three words every time she talks to him.
I like Katri better though her motives are probably worse; witch is in some ways the right word for a person who so emphatically breaks herself over and over on the rock of her own absolute will. She has some kinship to Lolly Willowes, or to Bulgakov's Margarita, women who not only ignore the social norms of their cultures because of inner promptings but who do not even notice on some levels that there are social norms to be ignored. The image I take away most strongly from this novel is the one that Jansson also used for the front cover, Katri walking through the snow in the morning before the sun has risen, smoking, with her great nameless dog at her side, and her changing yellow eyes. Katri would not approve of that as a romanticized version of herself: she is probably thinking about accounting. That is the reason it is such a brilliant novel.
This is a winter book.
In a village so small that everyone lives not only in one another's pockets but in one another's daydreams, Katri lives with her brother, Mats. Their mother died in the fall. Katri quit her job at the only store soon after, because the storekeeper wanted her. Katri is intelligent, brutally honest, and disliked, a woman as hard on herself as on everybody else, who doesn't name her dog, who can do anything with bookkeeping, who has yellow eyes and wears a wolfskin collar. The children throw snowballs at her window and chant 'witch' though she is only twenty-five. Katri would do anything for her brother, who is young and underestimated by everyone, and dreams.
Up the hill in a decaying family mansion lives Anna Aemalin, old and alone, an illustrator of books for small children which sell hugely and are greatly critically acclaimed except for the rabbits: they have too many cliched little bunnies in them. The village calls her house the rabbit house. Anna is wealthy.
Katri knows both what she wants and, she believes, how to get it, but it isn't that simple. Jansson's books are never simple. Neither Katri nor Anna are victim or villain. They are two people whose proximities, whose enforced intimacies and non-intimacies, make clear to each that she is the opposite of the other, and that her own beliefs are not exactly working. Over the course of this deceptively simple novel, wrapped in the appearance of non-plot, shot with winter light, they ambiguously break and heal each other.
In the foreword it is mentioned that Jansson found this novel the most difficult of her books to write. Understandable, but it doesn't show at all. As with much of her work, this is as all-of-a-piece and flowing as a rock from the bottom of a river. The details are precise and sometimes funny, the lists of silly things people write to Anna to ask her about merchandising (she wonders desperately why they want to put a noisemaker in the little rubber bunnies when rabbits do not make sounds except when screaming), the way Katri demolishes the storekeeper in three words every time she talks to him.
I like Katri better though her motives are probably worse; witch is in some ways the right word for a person who so emphatically breaks herself over and over on the rock of her own absolute will. She has some kinship to Lolly Willowes, or to Bulgakov's Margarita, women who not only ignore the social norms of their cultures because of inner promptings but who do not even notice on some levels that there are social norms to be ignored. The image I take away most strongly from this novel is the one that Jansson also used for the front cover, Katri walking through the snow in the morning before the sun has risen, smoking, with her great nameless dog at her side, and her changing yellow eyes. Katri would not approve of that as a romanticized version of herself: she is probably thinking about accounting. That is the reason it is such a brilliant novel.
