Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Stockholm : Bonnier, 1988 ;
Description
Published to mark the centenary of Tove Jansson's birth (1914), introduced by Ali Smith.
User reviews
LibraryThing member missizicks
This is an odd book, a fictionalised non autobiography or childhood memoir. Child Tove is a dark creature, intriguing and cruel. The childlike prose the stories are told in occasionally jarred with me. At other times it was perfect, getting across the surreal sense of being a child in a family of
Show More
artists. Some of the stories felt too short and incomplete, fragments or snippets that didn't quite work. My favourites were Jeremiah and Christmas. Most of the others felt unpleasantly dreamlike and unsettling. That's why I'm only giving it three stars. Show Less
LibraryThing member Goldengrove
Tove Jansson really is quite unlike anyone else, and this collection of autobiographical stories underlines that - twice, in extra thick black marker pen.
She said that she wanted to write "in fully adult mode yet about what is still a small world", and so these stories are told from the child's
The writing is taut and sharply beautiful, as always with Jansson.
She said that she wanted to write "in fully adult mode yet about what is still a small world", and so these stories are told from the child's
Show More
point of view. But unlike most adults who try to remember what life felt like to be their child self, Jansson seems able to completely inhabit that strange world; really, it's as if she never left. There is absolutely no mawkishness, no sentimentality in the child's viewpoint: it is amoral and certain. I find her rather frightening, especially in the story 'The Iceburg'. The writing is taut and sharply beautiful, as always with Jansson.
Show Less
LibraryThing member janeajones
I have been under the spell of Tove Jansson since I first read The True Deceiver in 2009. I never encountered her Moomin books as a child, and I must admit, the Moomins don't appeal to me in the same way that characters in the books by Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak do.
But the books, she wrote for
I found Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir (Bildhuggarens Dotter) enchanting. When I first discovered Jansson, this book had been long out of print and unavailable, though some of the chapters had been reprinted as stories in A Winter Book, so I was delighted to see that William Morrow had issued a paperback reprint last year.
Jansson's voice in these vignettes from her childhood is both whimsical and wise, creative and ultimately practical. Her memories take her from her grandparents' house in Sweden, to the loft-studio where she lived with her artist parents in Helsinki, to the small island on which they summered in Finland's bays.
This is from the chapter titled "The Bays":
The house is grey, the sky and the sea are grey, and the field is grey with dew. It's four o'clock in the morning and I have saved three important hours which can be counted as extra. Or perhaps three and a half.
I have learned to tell the time, although I'm not yet quite sure about the minutes.
I'm also light grey, but inside, because I'm all vague and wobbly like a jelly-fish, not thinking but just feeling. If you sailed a hundred miles over the sea and walked a hundred miles through the forest in all directions, you wouldn't find a little girl at all. They just don't exist. I know because I've found out....The nearest thing to it you'll find is Fanny who is almost seventy and collects pebbles and shells and dead animals and sings when it is going to rain.
But the books, she wrote for
Show More
adults, starting in 1968 with The Sculptor's Daughter including The Summer Book, Sun City, Travelling Light, and Fair Play have entangled me in Jansson's web of contemplation about friendship, work, artistry, childhood, and aging.I found Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir (Bildhuggarens Dotter) enchanting. When I first discovered Jansson, this book had been long out of print and unavailable, though some of the chapters had been reprinted as stories in A Winter Book, so I was delighted to see that William Morrow had issued a paperback reprint last year.
Jansson's voice in these vignettes from her childhood is both whimsical and wise, creative and ultimately practical. Her memories take her from her grandparents' house in Sweden, to the loft-studio where she lived with her artist parents in Helsinki, to the small island on which they summered in Finland's bays.
This is from the chapter titled "The Bays":
The house is grey, the sky and the sea are grey, and the field is grey with dew. It's four o'clock in the morning and I have saved three important hours which can be counted as extra. Or perhaps three and a half.
I have learned to tell the time, although I'm not yet quite sure about the minutes.
I'm also light grey, but inside, because I'm all vague and wobbly like a jelly-fish, not thinking but just feeling. If you sailed a hundred miles over the sea and walked a hundred miles through the forest in all directions, you wouldn't find a little girl at all. They just don't exist. I know because I've found out....The nearest thing to it you'll find is Fanny who is almost seventy and collects pebbles and shells and dead animals and sings when it is going to rain.
Show Less
LibraryThing member piemouth
Not so much a memoir as a group of stories from the point of view of a child - Tove Jansson. Very evocative and sweet. The one where she puts on her mother's tulle skirt and creeps around, spying a monster in the mirror, is perfect.
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1968
2013 (English translation)
Physical description
146 p.; 18 cm
ISBN
9100474517 / 9789100474515