Proust and Beckett should have read this
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Probably the most adult and psychological of the Moomin novels - a group of diverse creatures is drawn to Moominvalley to wait .. and wait ..
The obsessive-compulsive Fillijonk, the hermetic Snufkin, Grandpa-Grumble and other superbly imagined characters meet in a typically surreal environment. Did the Nummulite, a being that evolved from a Protozoan into a fierce Creature ever exist outside the imagination of Toft? And just how DOES one listen to the darkness? Themes of loneliness, longing and loss play heavily on the mind.
A strange, unsettling and quite wonderful book.
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Goodbye Moominvalley
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"Fillyjonk had never liked night-time. There's nothing worse than looking into complete darkness; it is like walking straight out into eternity and not having anybody with you."
By the time she came to write this last book in the Moominvalley series, Tove Jansson had declared that she could not longer go back to the 'happy valley' of the earlier novels and this sense of dislocation informs this wonderfully bleak conclusion.
As autumn turns to winter the peripheral characters from the other Moomin novels are drawn back to the Moominhouse by memories of the ever-accommodating family's warmth and liberalism. Finding it cold and abandoned, the odd, the alienated, and the nervous search for warmth and common ground with each other and in the process find that even the most powerful of personalities are made stronger by an ability to compromise.
This little meditation on loneliness and incompatibility never becomes depressive because Jansson's writing is economic, wistful and wry, and the heart behind it all is huge and compassionate.
This is a brave and indelible ending to the best books in the world.
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Last Moomin book ever written...
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...and for a good reason. Rereading the book after she had written it, Tove Jansson realised that while she was still telling stories about the inhabitants of the Moominvalley, she was no longer writing for children.
But it is wonderful that she did not realise this earlier - the book is beautiful. It is maybe the most melancholy of the Moomin books. It is the November and various characters turn up at the Moominhouse to spend some time with the warm Moomin family, only to find them gone and the house boarded up (to find out where they went, read Moominpappa and the Sea). The montley crew of visitors desides to settle in nevertheless...
This book and Moominpappa and the Sea are the ones that can really be enjoyed by adults, rich, beautifully written and full of exploration of very human issues. In fact, although I loved the Moomin novels as a child, these two I thought were strange and not wholly palatable then. Now they are the ones that stand out as the writer's masterpieces.
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