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A review by sydsnot71
The Listener by Tove Jansson
4.0
"He was a painter. For years, art exhibitions of all kinds had bored and depressed him." (p62)
This is the ninth Tove Jansson book that I've read in about a year. It is another short story collection. Some of the stories are shorter than others.* Some are more obvious than others but you always get the impression with Tove Jansson that a story about say, a squirrel, is about so much more than just a squirrel.
A lot of her stories - I think - are about the creative process and the life of an artist. Indeed the first story, The Listener, reminded me (indirectly) of J R R Tolkien's "Leaf By Niggle". Sometimes this metaphorical approach is more obvious than others: "Black and White - Homage to Edward Gorey" for example or "The Other".
Also, I wonder how many of them are directly or indirectly about death and loss. Perhaps I'm being morbid. There's a certain melancholic quality to her stories, although that might just be the way I'm reading them. Certainly, death and loss come up a lot. Even in reference to sleep:
"What is night? Sleeping till the next day; trying to sleep away your tiredness so you can face what you don't want to face; hiding yourself in a cautious little death for which you're not to blame - for hours that seem like seconds when you wake up." (p86)
She writes brilliantly about landscape and weather - "In Spring" in particular...er...springs to mind here. But also "The Storm" and "The Rain."
I sometimes read criticism of Jansson's short stories that nothing really happens. But that's deceptive. Things aren't always spelt out or cleared up. "The Birthday Party" and "The Silent Room" seem to be about relationships where we aren't given all the information. People are missing. Or their exact relationship to the people in the story isn't clear. There are a lot of lonely people in this collection. Or people that don't quite fit. You wonder if that's how Jansson saw herself (or artists more generally.)
Also, whilst sometimes not a lot seems to be happening a single sentence will do the work that other writers required pages to say. That sentence might be in the middle of a short story and it is the pivot around which a story changes, such as this line from "Black and White" :
"With great love and admiration, he thought of his wife, who had made it easy for him to leave. He felt his darkness drawing closer." (45)
Anyway, enough of this waffle. I enjoyed it a lot.
*There's insight for you.
This is the ninth Tove Jansson book that I've read in about a year. It is another short story collection. Some of the stories are shorter than others.* Some are more obvious than others but you always get the impression with Tove Jansson that a story about say, a squirrel, is about so much more than just a squirrel.
A lot of her stories - I think - are about the creative process and the life of an artist. Indeed the first story, The Listener, reminded me (indirectly) of J R R Tolkien's "Leaf By Niggle". Sometimes this metaphorical approach is more obvious than others: "Black and White - Homage to Edward Gorey" for example or "The Other".
Also, I wonder how many of them are directly or indirectly about death and loss. Perhaps I'm being morbid. There's a certain melancholic quality to her stories, although that might just be the way I'm reading them. Certainly, death and loss come up a lot. Even in reference to sleep:
"What is night? Sleeping till the next day; trying to sleep away your tiredness so you can face what you don't want to face; hiding yourself in a cautious little death for which you're not to blame - for hours that seem like seconds when you wake up." (p86)
She writes brilliantly about landscape and weather - "In Spring" in particular...er...springs to mind here. But also "The Storm" and "The Rain."
I sometimes read criticism of Jansson's short stories that nothing really happens. But that's deceptive. Things aren't always spelt out or cleared up. "The Birthday Party" and "The Silent Room" seem to be about relationships where we aren't given all the information. People are missing. Or their exact relationship to the people in the story isn't clear. There are a lot of lonely people in this collection. Or people that don't quite fit. You wonder if that's how Jansson saw herself (or artists more generally.)
Also, whilst sometimes not a lot seems to be happening a single sentence will do the work that other writers required pages to say. That sentence might be in the middle of a short story and it is the pivot around which a story changes, such as this line from "Black and White" :
"With great love and admiration, he thought of his wife, who had made it easy for him to leave. He felt his darkness drawing closer." (45)
Anyway, enough of this waffle. I enjoyed it a lot.
*There's insight for you.