Art in Nature

Tove's short stories are quiet and incisive - I've seen them described as boring, which is, of course, a matter of personal taste, but also wrong! - even when she writes about obsession and murder. Mostly, though, these stories are about the small happenings in ordinary lives which give clues to the deep emotions underlying the actions of her characters, and that, for me, is where the interest and value of Tove's stories lie.

Art in Nature presents us with extraordinarily intimate portraits of Finns and others caught up in a variety of situations. Taking its English title from the first of these eleven offerings by Tove Jansson, its original Swedish title was actually drawn from the fifth story, ‘The Doll’s House’. I can only assume it was retitled to avoid confusion with Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, but it is just as apt as a label for the whole collection because many of the subjects have a connection with artistic endeavours, through sculpture, cartoons, drama, novels and painting.

So it is that a caretaker of an exhibition attempts to reconcile a couple at odds over a painting they have acquired and a sculptor reacts badly to adverse reviews. An show more artist whose cartoon strip is widely syndicated suddenly gives up, leaving the job to a young successor. A novelist and her two old friends reveal anxieties below their confident exteriors while dining in a lakeside restaurant, and a tense relationship builds up between two men sharing a flat when one of them develops an obsession with building an ideal home in miniature within the apartment.

The foibles of individuals and the precarious nature of relationships is both revealed and dissected in these short stories; they are indeed like intimate scenes we see in the rooms of a doll’s house, the reader rendered a voyeur for a brief moment. Several of the later tales also involve journeys: worries about setting off, or return voyages which transform the traveller into a stranger reliving past glories; a violent action precipitated because the reality doesn’t match up to the dream, or a plane journey across time zones and across certainties.

By turns gentle and disturbing, opaque and revealing, Art in Nature blows in the cold wind and damp airs of northern climes, daring us to sit comfortably. There is art indeed in these tales set in sometimes bleak landscapes, an art which is simultaneously admirable and unsettling. I loved them.

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There is a strong possibility that if this collection had been by anyone else, I might have rated it higher, but because it was by Jansson, who is one of my favorite authors, I just WANTED TO LOVE IT MORE.

Short-story collections are often hit-or-miss for me. There were stories here that I loved, but there were also a few that fell flat for me.

I mean, this is definitely me wringing my hands over rating this ONLY four stars instead of five, which is NOT A BAD rating. I just wasn't as incandescently in love with this as I wanted to me. A lot of not terribly likable characters with not quite enough charm to balance it out, I think.

Finnish writer Tove Jansson is always a revelation. Known for her children's books about the Moomintrolls. Her books of short stories for grown ups and short novels are evocative, funny and sometimes painful. The most recent volume to be translated into English is Art in Nature. This collection, more than the others seems to focus on people who are either adrift or unwilling to move. She explores with a rare delicacy the play of emotions one person may experience in an hour or a lifetime, often the petty annoyance, subtle jealousies, and self-involvement. While, for me, The Summer Book remains her masterpiece, it is well worth finding her short stories which are a group of elegant, compact revelations.

How do you comment on a collection of short stories. Well there's the general summation - gentle, melancholic, but very perceptive overall. There is little outright joy but occasional contentment. Quite a few are indeed about art in nature, how the art or the artist interact with life or how life can seem like art. Some, like the Monkey just seem like loving observations of people.

The madness possible in art comes to the fore in the Cartoonist where the old cartoonist has perhaps been driven at least unbalanced by his years of work. The Doll's House has plenty of frenzy but in the end it's about the comforts of the couple against outsiders as much as it is about art. Is Locomotive about an obsessive writing about himself, or show more re-imagining himself or planning a murder or just a writer writing about these. A nicely observed psychopathy of art though. A Leading Role is more nuanced - the actress vampirically creating her role by manipulating her mousey cousin in between recognising that she likes her and is abusing her for her art.

And White Lady - about being old, of being finite. Several indeed have the feel of the semi-autobiographical, escaping from mother, the frictions of partnership, life being overwhelmed by art sometimes.

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Beautiful depictions of the mundanity and extraordinariness of ordinary life. It's a shame that this edition, published in London, uses USA English, though.

В сборник вошли повести и рассказы знаменитой финской писательницы Туве Янссон, пишущей на шведском языке. В центре этих произведений - отношения человека и окружающего его мира, близких ему людей. Как и все, что принадлежит перу Т.Янссон, эти повести и рассказы отличает тонкий психологизм, глубокое понимание душевного мира человека и неизменная нравственность.