redshift

Any sheets of paper she’d already written on lay hidden against the surface of the table, because if words lie face down there’s a chance they might change during the night; you may suddenly come to see them with a new eye, perhaps with a rapid flash of insight. It is conceivable.

A Winter Book is a collection of short stories by Tove Jansson, divided into three parts — snow, flotsam and jetsam, travelling light. The first part is a childhood in and around an artist’s studio; the second is a childhood on an island; the third is adult, but no less evocative or touching. It’s described as a book of “short stories for adults” — presumably to differentiate it from the Moomin books for which Tove Jansson is far better known — but really, it’s a book of short stories for anyone, I think.

Many of the stories are more than a little autobiographical, and reading the book I got the very strong sense of seeing the world through the author’s eyes, getting to know her a little at a time. These are sketches of life, often very simple but also captivating. There is a lot about island life, about childhood, about growing older and letting things go.

I’m a coastline girl. I lived until I was eighteen within half a mile of the shore, and the significance of the sea in this book really caught me, probably all the more so because of that. I’ll borrow a few of Val’s words on that subject, and I hope she will (yet again) forgive me: She lived much of her life in the archipelago and later on a small island in Finland. It shows. The sea is not only an inspiration. It’s there in almost everything she wrote and it seems almost like a character in its own right.

And a wonderful character too.

This is a beautiful book.

You can close your mind to things if something is important enough. It works very well. You make yourself very small, shut your eyes tight and say a big word over and over again until you’re safe.