Moominvalley in November

Okay, this book is a little of the charm and whimsy I missed from the last book!

Last book Moominpappa decided he wanted to live in a lighthouse on a (near-)deserted island, so he packed up his family and left without so much of a notice to any of their friends.

Well this book covers what basically happens to the rest of Moominvalley while they're gone. Apparently their friends and acquaintances all want to visit the Moomins, only to discover they're nowhere to be found. Instead of going home disappointed, they all just decide to live in the Moominhouse. Among this group is a Fillyjonk, a Hemulen, a little creature called Toft (which I hear is Tove Jansson's self-insert character), Mymble's daughter, and Snufkin, who comes back to show more Moominvalley to find 5 bars of music that escapes him.

Don't get me wrong, the book still isn't as cheery as say, book 1-3 or anything, but it's definitely a change from book 8! I loved seeing how this contrasting bunch of characters were thrown together and managed to ... "get along", in a way. It's also eye-opening to know how the characters we already know (Mymble's daughter and Snufkin) really thought about the Moomins, since we actually get to read chapters in their PoVs.

All in all, it's a very interesting and fun book to read, especially given the grim and melancholy book that preceded it. show less

I think this is the last of the Moomin novels that I hadn't read, and it was a bedtime story read aloud. It's a bit of an odd Moomin book as none of the Moomins are actually there, though they are often thought and spoken of by the other characters. It's the fall, and for various reasons, Hemulen, Fillyjonk, Toft, Mymble, Snufkin, and Grandpa Grumble have all descended on Moominvalley and take up an uneasy coexistence, waiting for the Moomins to return.

Without the endlessly patient Moominmamma or the soft Moomintroll to buffer them, this book more than any other becomes about living in community with people who have wildly different personalities and preferences. A sweet book full of amusingly spiky characters.

A fitting end to a show more wonderful series. show less

Such a deep, bittersweet tale for children and adults. Longing, loneliness, midlife crisis, breaking out of one's ruts and patterns, finding community with people unlike you. Reread this after the Backlisted episode, where they pointed out the bravery of writing a moomin book without moomins.

I read Moominpappa At Sea earlier this summer and Moominvalley In November just now, first time in a very long time that I've re-read the last two Moomin books, and they still hold up incredibly well; if anything, they work better now than they did back then. The series starts out as "just" well-written children's stories, then gradually get more adult - not in the sense that she adds more sex and violence, but simply in that the characters (both young and old) grow up and are forced to look at themselves, at how they see others, and their place in the world, all set against the backdrop of one of the most gorgeous descriptions of autumn and winter I've ever read. This last book doesn't even have the Moomins themselves in it except in show more spirit, instead it focuses on a bunch of minor characters who happen to wash up in the same house. It almost edges into metafiction at times, with one of the characters reading a book that seems to mirror his own life and ending each chapter with "End of chapter", and above all of course the central plot: a half dozen lost souls who actively seek out the Moominvalley, knowing that it's a children's fairytale land where nobody is ever sad or alone or neurotic or stuck in a rut, and not only finding it abandoned but also having to face that the world doesn't have places like that, and that hiding inside the image of one doesn't work. And of course, being sad or alone or neurotic or stuck in a rut is what the Moomin books were always about on some level, it's just that by now, the characters have grown up enough to face it head on. Beautiful.

There are certainly a lot of parallels between the later Moomin books and The True Deceiver (the characters are all but interchangeable, just substitue "paws" for "hands") introverted characters deliberately building a false image of the world and their relationships to others, the very typically Scandinavian head-down-fist-clenched-in-pocket-mumbling-under-breath stubbornness, and obviously the sense of being at once disconnected from and a slave to nature. Oddly, Moominvalley In November still ends more hopefully as winter comes crashing in, than The True Deceiver does when spring breaks the ice again. show less

Be warned, this book has no Moomins. The other characters of Moominvalley watch and wait for them, but they are gone. Its a melancholy book about change and disappointment and pushing forward in the face of missing people. Its also a kids book. A thing of beauty.

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3047598.html

The last of the Moomin books, this barely has the Moomins in it; instead six characters - the established Snufkin and Mymble, the Hemulen and Fillyjonk who may or may not be the same as earlier Hemulens and Fillyjonks, and the new characters Grandpa-Grumble and Toft, all congregate in the Moomins' empty house in November. I had not read this one when I was a child, and I think a child reading it would be a bit bemused by the absence of the central characters. Of course it's really about death and letting go; Jansson decided not to keep churning out Moomin stories but to write, in effect, about not writing any more. Each of the six protagonists has a little character arc; usually the smart show more reader can see pretty quickly what it is that they will be learning in the course of the short narrative. I must admit that I too missed the Moomin family, and I'm looking forward to returning to the other books of the series in due course. show less

This one is an actual, real life novel, and does not pull anything. There is horror and joy here, and all the vagaries of a lived life with characters full of pockmarked flaws, and the book does nothing to explain them to you or make them seem somehow *justified*; they *are* that way the way people are.

There is meaning and beauty in longing, and that’s what this book is about.