Tove Jansson's first book for adults was a memoir, capturing afresh the enchantments and fears of her Helsinki childhood. Restored to its original form, Sculptor's Daughter gives us a glimpse of the mysteries of winter ice, the bonhomie of balalaika parties, and the vastness of Christmas viewed from beneath the tree. Published in a deluxe hardback edition for Christmas Tove Jansson's first book for adults was a memoir, capturing afresh the enchantments and fears of her Helsinki childhood. Published in a deluxe hardback edition for Christmas , to mark the centenary of Tove Jansson's birth Paperback , pages.
Published October 1st by Avon Books first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Sculptor's Daughter , please sign up. The English translation by Kingsley Hart is very good. I am currently reading it, but cannot find it listed on goodreads.
Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson; Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words by Boel Westin – review
How do I list a book that cannot be found with a goodreads search? I really wanted to add it because it is such an enjoyable read. Telling a series of tales through the eyes of a child and still making it interesting reading for an adult is not an easy task. The pine cones are green and very hard. My feet are brown. And the wing is blowing right through my hair. See 1 question about Sculptor's Daughter….
Lists with This Book. Aug 10, Darya Conmigo rated it it was amazing Shelves: If you ask me right now, I'll tell you that this is the single most important book I have ever read in my life. And it will be the absolute truth. And the fact that there were other most important books earlier and there will be other most important books later I hope doesn't make it a tiny bit less true. When the log-fire is alight we draw up the big chair.
We turn out the lights in the studio and sit in front of the fire and she says: Every story has to begin in the same way, then it's not so important what happens. A soft, gentle voice in the warm darkness and one gazes into the fire and nothing is dangerous. Everything else is outside and can't get in. Not now or at any time. View all 12 comments. Dec 11, Jane rated it it was amazing Shelves: There is no better word for this book. My expectations were high. But this memoir …. A whole world of childish emotions and perceptions expressed with crystal clarity.
The words, the phrasing, everything is exactly right. All you have to do is walk along the light-coloured edges, on all the colours that are light. If you step on the dark colours next to them you are lost. You whisper and whisper and let the world grow until nothing exists except the word. The landscape was just as forbidding as before and looked like an illustration in which for once they had printed the grey shades properly. Out at sea the long-tailed ducks were carrying on like mad singing wedding songs to one another. Daddy stood quite still and it crept into his jacket and hung upside down and went to sleep.
Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
We carried his dinner outside to him and he ate it very carefully. No one was allowed to speak. Then we took his plate away and Daddy stayed where it was until it got dark. Then the bat flew around for a while and came back to him again. This time it only stopped for a moment — a kind of courtesy call. I pulled the hem a little. Then the tulle skirt drifted out on top of me with a quiet swish. I hear the clothes hanger swing and scrape the top of the wardrobe and the skirt came after me.
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The last room was dark like the inside of a tunnel except for a faint glow in the gold frames and the mirror which was hung too high on the wall. All the lamps were soft and misty and made a very tiny circle of light. And when you ran you made no noise. Under the Christmas tree Christmas is vast, it is a green jungle with red apples and sad, peaceful angels twirling around on cotton thread keeping watch over the entrance to the primaeval forest.
In the glass ball the primaeval forest is never-ending. Christmas is a time when you feel absolutely safe. Thanks to the Christmas tree. Now if only some one would magic up a reissue — this is a book that really should not stay out of print. Jan 20, Laura Leaney rated it really liked it. A completely unique book compiled of fragments of Tove Jansson's childhood, written as if they are being told by Tove the child. As a consequence, the memories are magical, surreal, Her parents are artists, and their bohemian love allows Tove the space and freedom to ignite her imagination at every turn.
I'm guessing that the author is six or seven years old, and as she roams the Finnish countryside that surrounds her family's summer cottage she makes up games, stories, and hones her astonishing A completely unique book compiled of fragments of Tove Jansson's childhood, written as if they are being told by Tove the child. I'm guessing that the author is six or seven years old, and as she roams the Finnish countryside that surrounds her family's summer cottage she makes up games, stories, and hones her astonishing memory for sensory detail. While I was reading, I kept thinking about how modern children - at least the ones I know in Los Angeles - are not allowed the freedom to wander, the freedom to wonder, to imagine that they'd just turned into a reed or a jelly-fish.
It is not a completely idealized past. Tove can be a cruel, somewhat nasty child. She's often hurtful to the hired help, having tantrums when her expectations are not met, but her memories reveal a growing artistic consciousness. It's the beautiful writing that captivates though. I can't exactly say why. Tove Jansson's prose is both simple and lush, a paradoxical combination of qualities. Tove Jansson is writing about her childhood in Finland by using a series of short stories — each recalling an episode from her home or from the country side.
A whimsical style blending reality and imagination allows one to experience life with her artistic parents and nonsensical outings into nature. Jansson's imagination wrestles with harsh reality so sometimes it all seems very dreamlike.
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It made me smile quite a bit. She also seems to have been an inspiring and eccentric artist well worth exploring. This book is the perfect gateway if you would like to linger in the dreams and memories of a very imaginative and delightful human being! Many wild adventures await you This site has some great picture of the Jansson family and definitely would add to your experience in case you decide to read her memoir: She treated words as if they were alive, believing in their transfiguring power. Another obsession was with wild nature.
She loved islands, storms, stones and fur at 15, she proudly designed and wore a pair of outlandish fur trousers. Throughout her life she worked. She believed in "work and love" — in that order. At best, they were fused: It was in that Tove Jansson met Vivica Bandler, a married theatre director. She'd had affairs with men, including the communist philosopher Atos Wirtanen.
The relationship with Bandler marked her crossing to "the other side". Their affair lasted three-and-a-half weeks and was "shattering". Westin tells but does not show why. What's missing in her placid commentary is any sense of the eroticism that sometimes animated Jansson's writing and, presumably, her life. Take "Annie", in Sculptor's Daughter , gathering cherry blossom: What we do learn is that Jansson minded acutely not being able to talk to her mother about her sexuality. Of her mother's silence she wrote: But it feels lonely. The Moomins are safer territory.
Invented by Jansson's uncle Einar, they started out nasty. If you were caught stealing from a pantry, a Moomintroll might swipe at your legs or blow down your neck. By the s and 60s, Jansson must have felt the Moomins were breathing down her neck.
Book review: Sculptor’s Daughter, by Tove Jansson
Moomin madness had struck. Ditto Walt Disney Jansson turned him down. Moomins were available in marzipan and on television. She had to control the trolls to paint on.
Sculptor's Daughter
And things often got difficult. There was anguish during the second world war, intermittent depression, stretches of feeling artistically void. One marvellous thing she "got on with" in middle age was an island cottage on Klovharun off the south-east Finnish coast, "the landscape I love more than all others… no other place has contributed more to my work". After her beloved mother's death, she wrote: She loved solitude, space, whiteness.
She revelled in her white studio resembling the "inside of a freshly rinsed shell", and in the Moomins' moonlit house in winter where a chandelier hibernates in white gauze. When Sculptor's Daughter was published in Finland in , readers longed for more. But Tove Jansson's response was firm — another bid for invisibility: Topics Tove Jansson The Observer.
Biography books Autobiography and memoir Children and teenagers The Moomins reviews.