Once upon a time in northern snowy Swedish climes there was a woman who every morning before dawn took a walk with her wolf-like dog, that had no name. Katri Kling has a head for numbers and a driving ambition: to move with her brother Mats into the mansion of Anna Aemelin, a children's illustrator. Once ensconced in a position as housekeeper/companion to the aging artist, she is determined to pay for the building of a boat that Mats has designed.

Jansson's novel is an exquisite gem exploring the mysteries and vagaries of human relationships. At the beginning of the novel each of the three major characters seems to be encased in a bubble of their individual personalities. Katri needs to control all the variables of her world; Mats is lost in the romance of sea-faring ventures; and Anna, a keen observer and intimate detailer of the world of the forest floor, is driven by her youthful fans to include flowery bunnies in her otherwise otherwise naturalistic woodscapes. Subtly each character each character evolves and influences the perceptions and actions of the others as the long Scandinavian winter begins to give way to spring. Jansson does not tie the novel up with a neat conclusion -- the ending is unsettling, but the reader leaves the book with a heightened awareness of how interconnected we all are.

I'm sure I shall revisit this book often , and I've already ordered the other books by Jansson that are affordably available in English.

THE TRUE DECEIVER by Tove Jansson, a Finnish novelist who wrote in Swedish, was originally published in 1982. The ARC of the NYRB 's English translation by Thomas Teal does not contain the introduction by Ali Smith that will be included with published version. ( )

Finnish writer Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is best known for her series of children's books about little hippopotamus-shaped trolls called Moomins. Jansson created the Moomins as a form of escapism while she was working as a cartoonist for an anti-fascist magazine during World War II. Several books featuring the adventures of the Moomintrolls followed between 1945 and 1970. After her mother died in 1970, Jansson set aside the Moomins and turned to writing novels for adults in which the loss of her mother continued to resonate.

In her novel The Summer Book (1972), also published by New York Review Books, a child who has recently lost her mother spends a summer with her grandmother on an island in the Gulf of Finland. The novel beautifully depicts the relationship between the small child, Sophia, and her loving but often astringent grandmother. Loss permeates the book—both the mostly unspoken loss of Sophia's mother and the loss of youth and time that the grandmother increasingly feels.

"It all seems to shrink up and glide away," the grandmother says.

Summer on the island becomes a symbol of loss and loneliness and the shortness of time, but Jansson's touch is light and whimsical enough that the sadness and symbolism never weigh the story down. Her cover illustration for the book is perfect: the dark island, with two dark figures alone on the point, floats weightlessly above its dark reflection in an sea of pale yellow and blue. In the middle of the island, among the dark trees, a square of yellow light glows in the window of the house.

In one chapter in the middle of The Summer Book, Sophia sleeps out alone in a tent and, waking to the profound darkness, ventures out into the night to find her grandmother:

She really listened for the first time in her life. And when she got out in the ravine, she noticed for the first time what the ground really felt like under her toes and the soles of her feet. It was cold, grainy, terribly complicated ground that changed as she walked—gravel and wet grass and big flat stones, and every now and then some plant as high as a bush would brush against her legs. The ground was dark, but the sky had a faint, gray light. The island had grown tiny, floating on the water like a drifting leaf, but there was a light in the guest room window.

When we go through a period of darkness, Jansson implies, we begin to notice things we haven't noticed before: subtleties of the darkness, the light that waits for us, the complicated texture of the ground beneath our feet.

In The True Deceiver (1982), Anna Aemelin is, like Jansson, an illustrator of children's books. She creates meticulously detailed paintings of the forest floor, then populates them with floral bunnies. Her life, in the family villa known to the locals as the bunny house, is quiet and well-regulated. She spends the winter answering letters from children, and when the snow finally melts she returns to the forest to paint. But everything changes when the ruthlessly pragmatic Katri Kling comes to live with her and starts to reorganize her life.

As in The Summer Book, the time and place—deep winter in a small coastal village—become a dominant presence in the novel, and deft symbolism is joined with deep psychological insight. Katri is both honest and calculating. She has no illusions about other people. She sees only self-interest at work, and is ruthless in exposing dishonesty and falsehood. Anna, on the other hand, lives in a kind of sentimental dream world, idolizing her late parents and painting floral bunnies. Although she is the older woman, she has, in a sense, never grown up. The conflict between Katri and Anna, between the jaded and the rose-colored view of the world, lies at the center of the novel. Is a certain amount of deception, self-deception and the hiding of truth from other people, necessary for happiness? Is there more to honesty than a scrupulous keeping of accounts?

Katri convinces Anna that Anna has been cheated by everyone from the local shopkeeper to the toy companies who contract with her to create and market toy versions of her signature floral bunnies. Katri insists on going carefully through the accounts and contracts with Anna, figuring out percentages and profits. Katri is all business, but Anna insists on making the business into a game—a game that moves from the real numbers in Anna's account book to entirely made-up sums. Katri is uncomfortable with the shift into fantasy, but Anna still needs some element of make-believe to make the real world bearable. Anna is an artist, and art, after all, is a form of make-believe, a kind of deception, a insistence on something made up. But should art be purely escapist, or should it make us look more penetratingly at reality?

There's a wonderful photograph of Tove Jansson surrounded by Moomintrolls, her mouth set at a wry angle, her eyes wide and hard and penetrating, looking past childish things at something more complex out there in the dark. ( )

Katri Kling is an outsider in the small Swedish town of Västerby. While everyone agrees that the yellow-eyed young woman with the huge nameless dog is capable and conscientious, her cold, direct manner is offputting. But Katri has a plan for herself and, even moreso, for her younger brother Mats. Through small acts of apparent kindness--delivering the mail, dropping off groceries--she weasels her way into the life of Anna Aemelin, a wealthy spinster who paints illustrations for children's books, until it seems that she is indispensible. In no time at all, the novel has shifted into an understated thriller as Anna not only becomes dependent upon Katri but begins to lose the things, connections and beliefs that comprise her own identity. But Jansson saves some surprises for the final chapters.

I loved the author's clear, clean style that so well matches the icy winter landscape and that not only sets the tone but complements Katri's personality. Yet the novel has its lyrical moments as well; in that, it reminded me of Linda Olsson's Astrid and Veronica. (Perhaps this is typical of Scandinavian writers; perhaps it is the effect of those long dark winters and the late spring sun.) Jansson also plays with fairy tale, myth, and folklore. For example, in an early moment, Anna suddenly recognizes Katri's rare smile as an illustration from one of her childhood books: the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.

This powerful little book was just what I needed to get away from the stress of the end-of-semester crunch. It grabbed me from the beginning, and I wolfed it down quickly. I will be looking for more of Jansson's adult work. ( )

Rec'd early reviewer ARC of this, just after reading Jansson's THE SUMMER BOOK (thank you, LibaryThing & NYRB). As in THE SUMMER BOOK, the writing here is as unadorned and crystal clear as the environment in which the story is set--in this case a cold, lonely winter in a small Swedish village. The "action" revolves around a young woman, Katri, who ingratiates herself into the solitary life of an older woman, Anna, a children's book illustrator, who lives in the largest house in the village. Through the course of year, I think, the two profoundly affect each other's understanding of themselves, unintentionally, helplessly. This was a very fast, absorbing read that really got under my skin. It's mythic, mysterious, tense, beautiful, unsettling, startling, deep. NYRB is doing english-speaking readers a great favor by bringing out Jansson's non-Moomin books. ( )

http://www.bookgeeks.co.uk/2009/10/23... ( )