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rushthatspeaksI 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 tosovay 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.
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.
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Date: 2011-03-11 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 08:43 am (UTC)I cannot figure out what I'd have thought of this book as a child. I simply can't imagine.