TRAVELLING LIGHT BY TOVE JANSSON

First ever publication in English, in a translation by Silvester Mazzarella.

A brilliant new collection of stories, gripping and unnerving.

Introduced by Ali Smith

Translated into English for the first time, Travelling Light takes us into new Tove Jansson territory.

Book blurb

A professor arrives in a beautiful Spanish village only to find that her host has left and she must cope with fractious neighbours alone; a holiday on a Finnish Island is thrown into disarray by an oddly intrusive child; an artist returns from abroad to discover that her past has been eerily usurped.

With the deceptively light prose that is her hallmark, Tove Jansson reveals to us the precariousness of a journey – the unease we feel at being placed outside of our millieu, the restlessness and shadows that intrude upon a summer.

My thoughts

An Eightieth Birthday | The Summer Child | A Foreign City | The Woman Who Borrowed Memories | Travelling Light | The Garden of Eden | Shopping | The Forest | The PE Teacher’s Death | The Gulls | The Hothouse | Correspondence

These stories may be loosely connected by the theme of otherness, isolation of being or wanting to be an outsider, of disconnection or desiring to disconnect. Whilst there is a lightheartedness running through the stories I did fell that some such as Shopping or The Gulls had a sense of menace bubbling just below the surface. There is certainly humour in there of the sort that the sharp observation and wit of such a gifted writer as Jonssan offers.

This is a delightful collection of short stories which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Book: Purchased

FAIR PLAY BY TOVE JANSSON TRANSLATED BY THOMAS TEAL

WINNER OF THE BERNARD SHAW TRANSLATION PRIZE 2009

INTRODUCED BY ALI SMITH

Book blurb

“So what can happen when Tove Jansson turns her attention to her own favourite subjects, love and work, in the form of this novel about two women, lifelong partners and friends? Expect something philosophically calm – and discreetly radical… Fair Play is very fine art.”

Ali Smith

What mattered most to Tove Jansson, she explained in her eighties, was work and love, a sentiment she echoes in this tender and original novel. Translated for the first time into English, Fair Play portrays a love between two older women, a writer and artist, as they work side-by-side in their Helsinki studios, travel together and share summers on a remote island. In the generosity and respect they show each other and the many small shifts they make to accommodate each other’s creativity we are shown a relationship both heartening and truly progressive.

My thoughts

Tove Jansson writes beautifully of two women who live and have their work spaces in the same home. They travel together. They know each other well as those who love and are so very close do. There is a depth of understanding and love that enables them to express themselves through their art, their discussions of the films they watch together, their thoughts on each others work and ultimately allows them selflessly and selfishly to be separated for their work, their art even when each knows they will miss the other and yet will relish the opportunity to work undisturbed.

Tove Jansson is a master of character writing and in Fair Play she has delivered an incredibly engaging, entertaining and tender story. What a wonderful book this is!

Book: Purchased

Information

Published: Sort of

Travelling Light | 224pp | Original paperback with flaps ISBN 978-0954899585 | £8.99 | BUY

Fair Play | 128pp | Original Paperback with flaps ISBN 978-0954899530 | £7.99 | BUY

Author

Photo by Hans Gedda [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was born in Helsinki, and was an illustrator and political cartoonist for the left-leaning, anti-Fascist magazine Garm.

She created a long-running comic strip and a series of children’s books featuring the much-loved hippopotamus-like character, Moomintroll.

She is also the author of eleven novels and short-story collections for adults, including The Summer Book and The True Deceiver. In 1994, she was awarded the Prize of the Swedish Academy.

Tove Jansson website| Tove Jonssan on AmazonSmileUK

Interesting information

TOVE – first feature film (moomin.com article 2020)

BBC Radio 4 – Letters from Tove by Tove Jansson – Sarah Lamble reading extracts

Fun fact – Napoleon’s Travelling Bookshelf by Sarah Hesketh from Penned in the Margins quotes from Moomin Midwinter by Tove Jansson. I just had to get a Moomin reference in!

Travelling Light and Fair Play were read for #moominweek | #20booksofsummer24 and one will count towards #2024EuropeanReadingChallenge

#20booksofsummer24

#2024EuropeanReadingChallenge

#moominweek