Translated by Thomas Teal
Introduction by Ali Smith
107 pages
Published 1989 (English translation published 2007)
Read March 10
Rating: 4 out of 5
A novel, a fictionalized memoir, a string of vignettes that reveal more in what isn't said than in what is. Like Jansson's The Summer Book, the stories here sketch the domestic joys and prickly squabbles of two characters pushing and pulling on the gravitational lines of their need for attachment and space.
Here, the central pair are based on Tove and her partner (or "companion"), the artist Tuulikki Pietilä. The two reside in separate apartments at opposite ends of one floor, share their summers in an island cottage, travel and gather into older age together. Their love is shown in silhouette around their cranky exchanges and need for space away from one another. To speak it would be superfluous.
As one would expect from Jansson, the imagery is precise as the shadows in northern summer, showing more than it tells.
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