Books & Poetry

I’m banking on not being alone when I confess to having been unaware that Tove Jansson, creator of the delightful Finn Family Moomintroll, also wrote adult novels. My ignorance has been my loss. 1989’s ‘Fair Play’ is only the third of Jansson’s 11 titles for adults to be translated into English, preceded by ‘The Summer Book’ and ‘A Winter Book: Selected Stories’. In a set-up that mirrors Jansson’s own domestic arrangements, it tells of Jonna, an artist, and her lifelong partner Mari, a writer and illustrator, who keep their own separate space, both physical and intellectual, yet are emotionally and creatively entwined.

There is no overt narrative as such, rather it is a series of vignettes, each worked around a seemingly mundane events – watching a video, rehanging pictures, eating crispbread – but each almost unbearably heavy with nuance about the nature of love, work and living. There isn’t a word that has arrived on the page by accident and, despite the apparent sparseness of the text, the very different characters of these two fearsomely independent women, absorbed both in their work and in each other, are drawn in exacting detail. Though the pair travel, as did Jansson, it is the scenes set on the couple’s tiny Baltic island that are the most engaging; the writing itself has the lingering softness of a long, light Nordic night.