Sculptor's Daughter (13 page)

In order of appearance:

Baby Tove with her father

Tove with her mother and grandmother

Uspenski Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Helsinki

Viktor Jansson in his Helsinki studio

Tove and her mother

Drawing by Tove of a view from her family home

Viktor Jansson playing guitar with the Finnish painter

Alvar Cawén

Tove and her mother drawing

Landscape of the Janssons' summer island

Tove (or brother Lars) rowing

Infant Tove

Viktor and Ham rowing

A young Tove in the sea

Landscape of the Janssons' summer island

Viktor and his monkey, Poppolino

Poppolino

Viktor and Ham in early married life

Viktor at work in his studio

Ham at work as a graphic artist

A young Tove

Viktor at work in his studio

Ham dressed as Saint Lucia for Winter Solstice celebrations

‘The Summer Book is a marvellously uplifting read, full of gentle humour and wisdom.' Justine Picardie,
Daily Telegraph

An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges – one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself.

Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour,
The Summer
Book
is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. This edition has a foreword by Esther Freud.

‘As smooth and odd and beautiful as sea-worn driftwood, as full of light and air as the Nordic summer. We are lucky to have these stories collected at last.' Philip Pullman

A Winter Book
features thirteen stories from Tove Jansson's first book for adults,
Sculptor's Daughter
(1968), along with seven of her most cherished later stories (from 1971 to 1996). Drawn from youth and age, this selection by Ali Smith provides a thrilling showcase of the great Finnish writer's prose, scattered with insights and home truths. It includes afterwords by Philip Pullman, Esther Freud and Frank Cottrell Boyce.

‘So what can happen when Tove Jansson turns her attention to her own favourite subjects, love and work, in the form of this novel about two women, lifelong partners and friends? Expect something philosophically calm – and discreetly radical. At first sight it looks autobiographical. Like everything Jansson wrote, it's much more than it seems …
Fair Play
is very fine art.' From Ali Smith's introduction.

What mattered most to Tove Jansson, she explained in her eighties, was work and love, a sentiment she echoes in this tender and original novel.
Fair Play
portrays a love between two older women, a writer and an artist, as they work side by side in their Helsinki studios, travel together and share summers on a remote island. In the generosity and respect they show each other and the many small shifts they make to accommodate each other's creativity we are shown a relationship both heartening and truly progressive.

‘I loved this book. It's cool in both senses of the word, understated yet exciting … the characters still haunt me.' Ruth Rendell

In the deep winter snows of a Swedish hamlet, a strange young woman fakes a break-in at the house of an elderly artist in order to persuade her that she needs companionship. But what does she hope to gain by doing this? And who ultimately is deceiving whom? In this portrayal of two women encircling each other with truth and lies, nothing can be taken for granted. By the time the snow thaws, both their lives will have changed irrevocably.

‘Jansson's prose is wondrous: it is clean, deliberate; an aesthetic so certain of itself it's breathtaking.' Kirsty Gunn,
Daily Telegraph

Travelling Light
takes us into new Tove Jansson territory. A professor arrives in a beautiful Spanish village only to find that her host has left and she must cope with fractious neighbours alone; a holiday on a Finnish Island is thrown into disarray by an oddly intrusive child; an artist returns from abroad to discover that her past has been eerily usurped. With the deceptively light prose that is her hallmark, Tove Jansson reveals to us the precariousness of a journey – the unease we feel at being placed outside of our milieu, the restlessness and shadows that intrude upon a summer.

An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called Art in Nature, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market. A draughtsman's obsession with drawing locomotives provides a dark twist to a love story. A cartoonist takes over the work of a colleague who has suffered a nervous breakdown, only to discover that his own sanity is in danger. In these witty, sharp, often disquieting stories, Tove Jansson reveals the faultlines in our relationship with art, both as artists and as consumers. Obsession, ambition, and the discouragement of critics are all brought into focus in these wise and cautionary tales.

 

 

Sculptor's Daughter © Tove Jansson 1968
First published (as
Bildhuggarens Dotter
) by Schildts Förlags Ab, Finland.
English translation © Schildts Förlags Ab, Finland 1969
All rights reserved

This English edition first published in 2013 by
Sort Of Books, PO Box 18678, London NW3 2FL.

Distributed by Profile Books
3a Exmouth House, Pine Stree, London EC1R 0JH.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.

Typeset in Goudy and Gill Sans to a design by Henry Iles.

Thanks to Sophia Jansson for her encouragement and advice, and to Peter Dyer, Henry Iles and Susanne Hillen for design and proofreading.

192pp.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1908745330
ePub ISBN 978-1908745347