I also recently read a forthcoming artistic/biographical study of Tove Jansson for Shelf Awareness, to be released by Thames & Hudson on December 6th. The final piece, “The Letter,” however, does present an imminent change: one of the partners is invited on a foreign fellowship and love means a temporary letting go. Not a lot happens, so not too much stood out a couple of other favourite stories were “Wladyslaw,” about welcoming a Polish refugee friend, and “In the Great City of Phoenix,” about a stop at an Arizona hotel. Each other’s work is a background hum if no longer a daily keeping-to-task. The two women have studio space at either end of a large apartment building and meet to watch films (the subject of “Videomania”) and go on trips. What the book does beautifully is recreate the rhythm of life lived alongside another person. There are other specific details drawn from life, too. Of course, this cannot be read as other than autobiographical of Jansson and her partner of 45 years, Tuulikki Pietilä. Rather like a linked short story collection, it presents vignettes from the lives of two female artists – Mari, a writer and illustrator and Jonna, a visual artist and filmmaker – who are long-term, devoted partners. This is a late work, first published in 1989 but not available in English translation (by Thomas Teal published by Sort Of Books, with an introduction by Ali Smith) until 2007. Apart from A Winter Book and The Summer Book, I’m still new to Tove Jansson’s writing for adults, having become most familiar with her Moomins series over the last 11 years.
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