R. Frac in Moominland (Books Post)

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Quotidian Quotient

We had nearly a week of hard-frost mornings with bright blue skies. Now great winds are rolling around the Beautiful Shed, I have daylight candles lit, and the sky is full of portents. Well, clouds.

I sent nine postcards for the year's turning yesterday, and was pleased with myself about it. It was an efficient day, actually -- so much so that it feels like risking a jinx to say so. (If you wanted a card but you're not sure I have your address, pls DM.) I often use "sunreturn" from Le Guin's Earthsea as the focus of my solstice cards.

Today I wrote a small letter to my friend on the Isle of Iona, who is used to such eccentricities as paper letters from me. I love writing letters. I wish I had more occasion to do so.

Friday night K. and M. had me over for dinner, and I liked it so much I went out and bought the same fish fillets and bok choy so I could make the identical dinner over again. They have a wood stove, and the smell and feeling in the house are a joy. Much talk of shop and also Barcelona, which K. & M. love and I have never visited.

Books Post Proper: Frac Visits Moominvalley for the First Time

As I think I've explained elsewhere, I find it difficult to read seriously during a heavy teaching term. I end up reading short, easy things, or the first chapter of several things while wearing a distracted frown, or, if I'm not careful, no things at all except Internet skimming. I also don't like to read material directly related to work in case I discover an error or omission that it's too late for me to fix.

I have a mind of many portcullises and trapdoors.

Are there short (or swift) and satisfying books you can suggest for such circumstances?

I follow the Backlisted podcast obsessively, and the last episode but one discussed Moominvalley in November. Consequently, I've been reading the Moomins for the first time. I didn't read the books as a child. I heard about Tove Jansson on a different books podcast (Bookfight. As an indirect result, I read The Summer Book a few years ago. I love it, but I'd never sought out the children's books until now.

Here are the Moominbooks and my reading experience of them thus far.

Comet in Moominland – I haven't read this yet, as they don't seem to have it at the library.

The Moomins and the Great Flood – I read this first. This is the first Moomin book that Jansson wrote, though not the first published in English. Like many first-books-in-a-series, it doesn't have quite the voice or the feel of the later books. I like whimsy, and this contained much of it, but it didn't do that much for me.

Finn Family Moomintroll – In progress. Tonally on the lighter end of the spectrum; more a collection of set pieces so far.

Moominsummer Madness – This was fun, mildly perilous, and stuffed with delightful bits of satire on excessive park signage and the theatrical life.

Moominland Midwinter – This I read second and liked better than Great Flood, as the strangeness begins to cohere into a worldview, and large ideas lurk & loom & then quietly melt away in the thaw.

Tales from Moominvalley – Not read yet.

Moominpappa at Sea – Not read yet, but looking forward to it, as it apparently concerns Moominpappa's midlife crisis.

Moonminvalley in November – Yeah, like they said on Backlisted: an actual masterpiece. Seriously. It's wonderful.

I wouldn't skip right to it, though. If you are, like me, new to Moominvalley, I would read at least one and preferably several other Moomin books first, because the strength of this book rests partly on its relationship to, and difference from, the others in the series. Backlisted episode here if you don't want to take my word for it.


Non-Moomin-Related Books

Sjon Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was

A novella, really. This was interesting. The plot concerns a young queer man in Iceland, obsessed with cinema, trying to survive the post-World-War-One flu epidemic. It's an elliptical, spare, psychological narrative, cool and estranged.

I'd only read The Blue Fox before and found it disquieting and difficult to forget. At first I didn’t like Moonstone as much, but the final chapter – a sort of coda, really – did several things that mashed around what I thought the story was doing with fiction and nonfiction. Some of these new ingredients I liked and some I didn’t so much, but they all changed the way I read the earlier part of the book, and so I ended up liking it better. A book to re-read.

I've started another of Sjon's novellas, and am feeling doubtful about it, but since narrative disquiet seems to be his hallmark, I should probably carry on.

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Comments

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I need to re-read November. I liked it the least of them, but I think because the Moomins weren't there, and I found it sad. But I haven't read it for decades. Second least was Moominpapa at Sea, because of all the existential angst. Midwinter is my absolute fave. It just hits the sweet spot between coziness and melancholy. I like it even better now that I know Tooticky was based on Jansson's long-time partner. (I always wanted to be TooTicky when I grew up). The Exploits of Moominpapa is a hoot. All the others are just fun. I was so lucky to have read them as a child (I read Comet in England at around age 7), and was given Finn Family for Christmas the year after we came to Canada. Sent by rellies in England because they weren't available here. Then we moved to Victoria and they were all in the library!!! Also if you can get hold of Tales from Moominvalley, some of the stories are very fine.

[radiantfracture]

Ha, and doesn't it seem like those reactions make perfect sense for a young reader? November and Sea are, I think, books for grownups written into a children's setting. (Though it's perfectly reasonable for a grownup not to like them either, if they don't yield what's wanted. I didn't have any established relationship with the Moomins going in.)

[intertext]

Yes, that's absolutely true. I listened to that podcast about November, and thought then that I must revisit it. I think my response to At Sea won't change - it made me uncomfortable also for quite personal reasons. My dad was a bit like MP, quixotic, dreaming of adventure that he wasn't quite up to, running away from the 'real' world. My mum spent most of my life desperately homesick for England, so I could so empathize with MM drawing her garden on the walls of the lighthouse and disappearing into it. I wanted to be Little My or Snufkin but was - as an only child, with those two parents - more like Moomin in the winter and on the island: desperately lonely. I think I've become Snufkin in my old age, which is a pleasing achievement. Thinking about all this makes me realize how brilliantly Jansson portrays characters and human nature.

[radiantfracture]

I've now started reading Moominpappa at Sea, and I think I see what you mean. My own father is not really like Moominpappa, but the dynamic is familiar in a larger sense.

Jansson is so good on selfishness in these books. Her characters can be absolutely awful, but things generally turn out all right. The selfishness is rather childish and forgivable and can be accommodated, usually through the generosity of Moominmama. I end up feeling like Jansson is making room for people to be less than perfect, even unpleasant, but still part of the family/community.

But there's something so distressingly and particularly patriarchal about Moominpappa at Sea so far. This insistence on doing everything and knowing everything; on trying to suppress and crowd out Moominmama's skills and knowledge -- it's beyond lovably flawed into actively oppressive. It makes it quite hard to read, for all the fascination of the lighthouse and the island and the signs that Something is going on.

I'm only on page 57, though, so there's time for my mind to be changed.