If you've not read Tove Jansson you should, she's wonderful. And you might start with her short stories, as she has written a lot of them. Just a few stories in I see she is a very successful practitioner of the form. I think a really good short story can be hard to write. You need to do so much in such a small space and some writers pull it off a bit better than others. Tove Jansson can pull it off. They are wonderfully descriptive and convey so much. Depth and breadth yet succinctness, too. This week's story, "The Summer Child" from Travelling Light is very amusing. She once again leaves the reader with something to think about with a deftness in the telling. There is a turn around in the characters, that moment of acceptance and understanding. And it mostly involves just two boys of eleven years or so.
The summer child is a city child who has been shipped off to the countryside to benefit from the fresh clean air and green fields and seaside.
"It was clear from the very start that nobody at Backen liked him. He was a thin, gloomy child of eleven, who somehow always looked hungry. The boy should have aroused people's most tender protective instincts, but he just didn't."
The thing with this boy, Elis, is he might have inspired more sympathy had he been a wee boy from poor parents who just couldn't give him what he needed. But when he arrives at the ferry landing in his father's private and very expensive car, it's hard to show much beneficence towards him. Of course, maybe there is a little more at play here, too.
" . . . the Fredrikson family were offering a holiday home to a child for the summer out of the goodness of their hearts, and for a small fee, of course."
What's lovely about this story is Elis and his Fredrikson contemporary, Tom manage to give each other something despite the at first shared dislike. A bad situation turned better in the end.
What makes Elis so painfully annoying for the Fredrikson's and in particular Tom, who Elis follows around (and the family encourages the boys to play together being of similar ages), is his amazingly gloomy nature. He is a 'glass half empty' sort of boy. The world is going to come to an end. Why bother throwing a fish out of water back in--he'll only die anyway. He is well informed about everything that is dying and miserable, but then he says, he has to be since no one else cares!
"When it came to giving people a bad conscience, he was an expert. Sometimes all he had to do was just look at you with those gloomy, grown-up eyes and you would be instantly reminded of all your failings."
How does a boy of eleven become so dreary? We never find out, but you wonder and surely his unknown situation just might elicit a bit of pity. Until he says something like this to his hosts:
"How much are you being paid for me? Is it over the counter? I mean, are you paying tax on it?"
Oops? Now that won't help make friends. So, when the family goes on a little day away to see the local lighthouses and Elis decides at the first one it is most amazing and he wants to stay and explore longer, Tom is told by his parents he must stay back and look after him. It wouldn't do at all if he somehow fell into the water and disappeared. After weeks of being hounded and bothered by Elis Tom is not feeling especially generous but does as he is told.
I won't give anything away but events transpire that Tom is able to turn the tables on Elis. But actions on both sides serve as a lesson to each. Funny how life throws these sorts of situations--and people--at us. It just goes to show you something can be learned from all the people we encounter in life.
One of the things I like most about Jansson's writing is the description of place so I will share just a couple more things. I think she must have lived somewhere very beautiful and I always appreciate descriptions of nature.
"Out of doors, though, all was completely at peace. It was a time of light breezes and soft summer rain; down in the meadow the apple trees were in bloom, and all of nature was at its loveliest."
It's especially nice to think of such a place when my morning walk took place in subzero temperatures and on icy sidewalks. Even if the sun was out, it gave no warmth! And isn't this a great image:
" . . . the boat appeared as a little black speck on the grey morning sea and then they could see white moustaches thrown up by the bow."
Next weekend I'll be reading "A Foreign City." I wish my New Yorker reading was going as well as these Tove Jansson stories. It is not lack of interest just lack of time and I seem to be reaching more for my books than magazines at the moment. Still, I will try and catch up this week and hope to read Ottessa Moshfegh's "The Beach Boy" (already in progress as a matter of fact) and Anne Carson's "1=1", which is quite short . . . and there is the long weekend next weekend to look forward to. But I'm not planning it quite yet (well, maybe just thinking about it).