A Winter Book, Tove Jansson
A Winter Book is a collection of some of Tove Jansson’s less famous writing — i.e., this isn’t the Moomins. Instead, this is a selection of short stories written throughout her life, many of them autobiographical or otherwise revealing. The stories are generally quiet set pieces, often with vivid images at the centre — the girl rolling a stone home; the girl throwing her torch onto an island of floating ice and lighting it up, but too scared to jump across…
‘Quiet’ is definitely the word that comes to mind most; the prose (even accounting for translation) is unassuming and relatively down to earth. Things are just so.
The writing isn’t bad, but it’s not the sort of short story writing I actually really enjoy, though at times it can be done really well (thinking Raymond Carver).
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