FICTION: EILEEN BATTERSBYreviews The True DeceiverBy Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal, Sort Of Books, 201pp, £7.99
IT IS EASY to retreat into a closed world when the ordinary events of daily life appear threatening, or merely dull. Slowly but surely, a wider circle of English-language readers is becoming aware of the adult fiction of the children’s writer Tove Jansson, who drew on her mixed Finnish-Swedish heritage. Best known as the creator of the Moomins, a Scandinavian community known for commonsense and biggish noses, Jansson had a thesis – survival is what counts – and the inhabitants of the Moominvalley and the Lonely Mountains adhered to that. Whatever the test, they endure.
It is a theme that runs through her work; her characters are often presented with unattractive reality and once they absorb the shock, they fight, which is more or less what old, or perhaps, not so old, Anna Aemelin does in this powerful new addition to Jansson's growing canon available in English. First published in Sweden in 1982, when she was 68, The True Deceiveris an unsettling performance from a writer who was a true original and capable of a dark realistic simplicity.
Katri Kling is a strange young woman who lives with her brother, who may be slightly backward. There is a third element, a large German shepherd dog who follows Katri as she marches through the village. Woman and dog display no affection to each other. Instead they share an impersonal companionship. When the novel opens it is soon made clear that Katri, who is known for having a head for figures, has already established a distance between herself and everyone else in a depressed coastal village in which no one even fishes anymore. But there is boat building. The local children shout “witch” in her wake and the relentless snow has repressed life as much as it has reduced daylight to a memory.
“The continuous snowfall carried with it an impression of darkness that was neither dusk nor dawn, and it depressed people.” Jansson sets the scene: depressed villagers with little to say and nothing to hope for. But Katri has a project and is slowly working on it. Among the small cast of characters is Anna Aemelin, a near recluse who lives out of cans sent to her by the local shop owner. She is not poor: far from it, she is famous beyond the village as the illustrator of apparently soppy children’s books for which her publisher contributes a slight text. Her royalties arrive and she has a devoted following among children who adore her rabbit pictures in which the bunnies are decorated with flowers.
Aemelin lives alone in the Rabbit House, a dwelling built by her now dead father, a man of regular habits such as always insisting on collecting his own newspaper. Anna is different; she has allowed herself to become dependent on all who come near her. She is vague and rather confused – or is she? Is it merely an act, her way of sliding through the days? Jansson is a shrewd writer and capable of balancing the imaginative with the chillingly astute. The mood shifts, and increasingly cryptic exchanges establish an atmosphere of suspicion and menace.
Born in 1914, her mother was the famous Finnish/Swedish artist, Signe Hammarsten, while her father, Viktor Jansson, was a well-known sculptor. Young Tove grew up in a bohemian household. Imagination was the daily form of communication.
Tove soon established herself as a children’s writer. She had a love of the natural world and lived on islands, fishing for her food. Islands dominate her work and often acquire a metaphysical symbolism.
In ways, her life was an extended childhood adventure, living as a daughter until her mother died when Tove Jansson was past 50. It was only then that she began to write adult fiction, publishing The Summer Bookin 1972. In it, an old woman and a young girl inhabit the same island over the course of a summer. It is a profound story, balancing the vulnerability of old age and the expectation of youth.
In 2006 A Winter Book, a collection of short fiction, its title inspired by The Summer Book, was published by Sort Of. It is a fine place to begin to experience Jansson's singular world vision. Another of her adult novels, her final book, Fair Play, first published in 1989, followed in translation from Sort Of in 2007. She died in 2001 at the age of 86.
Even admirers of her work will be impressed by the stark sophistication of The True Deceiveras Jansson explores the wary relationship which develops between Anna the artist and Katri, a woman intent on securing her place in the world at whatever cost.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times