In my opinion, Tove Jannson is the best children's author who ever lived and one of the ten greatest authors of the twentieth century. I have only read her Moomintroll work and not the work for adults, but I have read almost all of the Moomintroll books, picture books and comic strips. In this review I will focus on Moominpappa at Sea, but I will also try to give a sense of why I think that she deserves to be placed with the likes of Orwell, Nabakov, Hemingway and Selby, even though she wrote books about Finnish Hippo-like creatures.Picking a favorite Moomintroll book is difficult for me, but it is probably between Moominpappa At Sea and Moominsummer Madness. Her novels along with the picture book Who Will Comfort Toffle are at the centre of her work and divide into two periods. There are the earlier books which are primarily adventure stories and the later books where the characters tend to go off into the woods and think alone. Of the Early books Comet In Moominland is the best. Moominsummer Madness is the transitional work and Moominpappa At Sea is the best of the later works.There have been in picture books and in the graphic novel occasional works of genius where the producer of the text and the producer of the art being the same person fuse the art and the text into a seamless work of genius. In children's novels there is only one such writer and that is Tove Jannson. Her writing and her black and white line drawings are both great art and they are fused together allowing her to produce masterpiece after masterpiece.Of course Jansson is primarily a writer and her prose is assured and masterful. For instance, the second paragraph of the book reads:"Moominpappa aimlessly puttered about in his garden, his tail dragging along the ground in a melancholy way. Here, down in the valley, the heat was scorching; everything was still and silent, and not a little dusty. It was the month when there could be great forest fires, the month for taking great care."I just finished Midnight's Children a week or two ago, which won the Booker of Bookers, and there is no paragraph in that work that is so assured, so subtle or that sets mood and tone so effectively. Jannson can write an effective adventure story and she knows how to focus a story. However, a lot of her writing involves setting out telling details, juxtaposing them in a controlled way and having the reader make the links. This is reminiscent of Hemingway and done about as well. If you don't believe me check out the following paragraph, which if it did not have a reference to tails might as well be by Hemingway:"Moominpappa went to the window facing south and peered out. Moominmamma looked up quickly and noticed that his tail was quite stiff with irritation. She put some more wood on the fire and opened a can of herrings. Moominpappa drank his tea without saying a word. When Moominmamma had cleared away, she put the hurricane lamp on the table and said"I remember hearing once that some lighthouses use gas. When the gas is finished it's quite impossible to light them."In context this is a quite subtle piece of writing. Moominpappa is having what amounts to an existential crises and this piece gets subtlety at his emotions and Moominmamma's attempt to deal with this crises. There is also in all the Moomintroll books a gentle sense of the magic of all things just under the surface that is reminiscent of Marquez. She can also do parody very well. Portions of The Exploits of Moominpappa parody Dicken's and in Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll she parodies in the character of the Muskrat professional philosophers in a gentle, but sharp way.All these comparisons to Dickens, Hemingway, Marquez and others might suggest that she is too complex for children. This is absolutely not the case. I first read Comet In Moominland to my son when he was three and he absolutely loved it. Great books have meanings on multiple levels at once, and can so give up new meanings on multiple readings. The Moomintroll books are highly effective at entertaining children and furthermore are immensely gentle and charming works. It is Jannson's ability to appeal so deeply to all ages that is part of her greatness.Her art is also outstanding (less so in the cartoons which are hurried). There is a great expressiveness in her characters which are essentially cartoons. A lot of her art involves lonely figures or groups dwarfed by vast natural landscapes, which at once invoke a feeling of solitude and the majesty of nature while having cute hippos in them that appeal to children.Tove Jansson explores a variety of themes and has a peculiar philosophical vision. The Moomintroll books were written in the immediate aftermath of World War II, which hit Finland very hard. While there is no war and almost no violence in them I think that they are a sort of antidote to the inhumanity of that conflict. The books all have a moral core which is accepting individual idiosyncrasies while at the same time feeling that there is a sense of appropriateness to things. This is personified by the character of Moominmamma who is described as very moral but broad minded.All of the Moomintroll books explore deep themes with a subtle charm. This book in particular is an exploration of the meaning and purpose of life and has a slightly melancholy tone. The events in the book are precipitated when Moominpappa who no longer has any purpose in Moominvalley abruptly moves the family to live in a remote abandoned lighthouse on an island. He then tries to find purpose by becoming the lighthouse keeper and then later by understanding the sea. Moominmomma has lost her old purpose as a mother in Moominvalley and tries varies ways to recreate it. Moomintroll is seaking independence and maturity and is trying to forge his own purpose which he accidentally stumbles into by reaching out to the Groke who is the very embodiment of fear and lonliness and which even the trees and the sand are afraid of. Meanwhile, Little My has no need for these kinds of existential meanderings as she is perfectly happy doing whatever it is she feels like at that moment.The book I think is trying to elucidate a theory where for each person there is a specific purpose that will give their particular life meaning, and that this can be done through a variety of means. The moral aspect comes from the importance of developing a purpose that is respectful of the needs of other people in developing their own. It softly and gently and in a way that anyone of any age can enjoy, explores these themes.Beautiful book and sometime in the future everyone will be surprised that she never won a nobel prize given that every third award is given to someone Swedish.
How is this a children's book!? Okay, sure. I get it. We have our regular cast (well, four of them anyway) doing the usual Moominish stuff, which is certainly entertaining for children, . . .. . . but how many children's books do you know that are about men in mid-life crises and the effect it has on their families? This is really ponderous, adult-level stuff -- but with hippo-things instead of people. It starts gloomy and it gets progressively gloomier as each character struggles with the changes wrought by Moominpappa who, trying to find meaning in life, moves the family from safe, comfortable Moominvalley to a storm-tossed island in the middle of the sea where he intends to become the lighthouse-keeper. Taking the role of provider and protector to the extreme, he also takes over many of Moominmamma's usual duties, leaving her feeling rather useless. Clearly homesick, she spends most of the book trying to recreate her garden in a landscape that is not particularly suited for it. When that doesn't pan out as well as she hopes, she retreats into painting a mural on the wall, into which she disappears -- LITERALLY!Meanwhile, Moomintroll hits adolescence like a bug hits a windshield. He creates his own space on the island, and slowly moves out of the lighthouse -- a slow separation from his parents that he seems to understand might trouble them. He spends hours down at the beach, entranced by sea-horses that emerge from the sea when the moon is out and tease him with their beauty. He also drawn to and frightened by the fearsome Groke, another female figure, who has followed them from Moominvalley to the island. Whereas the Snork Maiden always operated as Moomintroll's "play" girlfriend, Moomintroll's fixation on these two alternating figures of the female seem to symbolize his entrance into the more adult world of male/female relationships. And Moominpappa tries to get fish for the family, to understand the patterns of the sea, and most importantly to get the lighthouse light going, a task he continually fails at, which threatens the purpose of the entire journey, intended to give him meaning. The only constant is Little My, who is as irrepressibly chaotic as ever, and tends to operate as everyone's id, saying aloud what people are only thinking, and acting when they cannot act for themselves. Like all the Moomin books, this one is chock-full of the surreal -- perhaps more than most. And it's also deeply emotional, albeit in that understated, minimalist way that feels so Scandinavian. I'm still processing this book. I might just need to read it again.
What do You think about Moominpappa At Sea (1993)?
Muminky miluju už od dětství. Tehdy, bohužel, vyšly pouze dvě knížky - Čarodějův klobouk a Tatínek píše paměti. Teď, s vlastními dětmi, už si můžu užít i všechny ostatní příběhy. A jsem rád, že děti milují muminky taky.Tatínek a moře není jednoduché čtení - je to předposlední kniha, která vyšla dvacet let po té první. A ten posun je znát. Celá kniha je velmi melancholická, dýchne na vás vše, co si jako středoevropan představujete o Skandinávii. Je také velmi komorní. V každé muminí knize je spousta (vedlejších) postaviček. V téhle je celkově jenom šest postav (a jedna z nich je Morana). Muminkova rodina se tak sestává jenom z tatínka, maminky, Muminka a malé Mii. Zbývající postavou je nerudný a téměř nemluvný rybář.Kniha melancholicky už začíná: muminkův tatínek má splín a sní o majáku na ostrově. Muminkova maminka, dobrá to žena, usoudí, že vydat se na dlouhodobý výlet na takový ostrov, je dobrý nápad. A tak se rodina sbalí, opustí Muminí údolí a vyrazí na moře.Ostrov s majákem opravdu naleznou a stráví na něm léto a podzim. Ostrov, jako takový, je možné považovat za další postavu - ostrov "žije", má antropomorfní rysy. Později v knize obživnou i další neživé, či nemovité věci - stromy, kameny, písek.Kniha je určitě pro starší děti. Kromě té melancholie je zde spousta nedořečeného, prostředím ovlivněný rozpad komunikace, unikání z reality do vytoužených krajin... malá Mia dokonce povraždí mravence drnové petrolejem. No, vysvětlete to dětem!Přes to všechno je to fascinující čtení. A jak říkám, dětem se to líbilo.
—Vít Kotačka
Beautiful writing! I've read the Moomin books more or less in the order they were written in, and this is very different from her earlier works. I loved the first 3 books too, but they often seemed like almost random, sometimes unconnected things happening to the characters. Here, there's suddenly so much more subtext and so much more character development. And so much more mystery! Trees and rocks who are afraid and will move to a different location, for example.There are some paragraphs that are perfect they way they are, every single word. There are hauntingly beautiful, meaningful and deep scenes. Moominpappa explaining to his son how he needs to find out the laws governing the sea in order to like it, for example, because you need to fully understand something to like it. Moominpappa talking to the sea and telling it to leave the island alone and stop scaring it. Moomintroll and the Groke storyline, Moomintroll and the sea horses storyline. Moomintroll asking Little My how to get rid of the ants and then going to his secret hide-out to discover what she had done, at the same time having sort of known what would happen. Moominmamma painting her old garden back at home on the wall of the lighthouse, and then herself, only to find that she can actually go inside the picture, but to have that ability disappear as soon as she feels she is no longer homesick.
—Kätlin
This was my third Moomin-book, one I was left in awe after reading. Moominpappa at Sea was deliberately darker than other books on the series I've read this far, something I was not expecting. The story began dark, and it only got darker and more suffocating the longer it continued, a feeling of inevitable doom lingered around the lonely island and the huge lighthouse the Moomin family moved into. The story circled around Moominpappa, who felt unnecessary, felt less-of-a-man, felt like his mission as the protector of the family, as a traditional dad, was somehow threatened and was thus filled with fierce need to tame. And he tried, he tamed, and his family fell a bit apart, and the sea was too powerful, and the trees on the island started to move and the island started to breathe during night, and Moominmamma physically disappeared into a painting. The melancholy and the fine pains every character in this book seemed to bear were exceptional, and the ever-lonely Groke was, at the same time, the happiest and the saddest of them all. The seahorses were beautiful and cruel and wild, and Moomintroll was enchanted, haunted by them. Moomintroll also had to deal with a mass-murder of ants, the death of a huge community, the burden of which was placed on his shoulders by cruel and unapologetic little My. As the cherry on the top, Moomintroll came to form a strange relationship, a little scary one covered with shades of pity, with Groke. Their encounters never failed to send chills down my spine. Littly My mainly disappeared and reappeared, strolled and adventured around on her own through the whole book, knowing a lot more than any other person on the island, on the story. Moominmamma disappeared because she was alone too much. Moominpappa tried to lose his fear and tried to make a home, tried to know how and why, tried to accept the nature of the sea.
—Niina
