Travelling Light

The stories here are assembled around the theme of having travelled to a place in which the characters are, too some degree, out of their comfort zone. Some find comfort, most don't. Many of the characters are neurotic, a few, perhaps, psychotic. Elis Gräsbäck, The Summer Child, is the most misunderstood, his unbearable pessimism being rooted in the neglect he suffered and a too-early exposure to apocalyptic news media.
The Garden of Eden has a Mapp and Lucia feel, and while Tove obviously tells the story she wanted to in relatively few pages, I think I could have read at least one novel about Professor Viktoria Johanson's adventures amongst the ex-pat community in a small Spanish village.
I felt all the stories had something to show more recommend them, though the final one, Correspondence, was rather special as it consists of the real-life letters to Tove from a 14 year-old Japanese fan, who Tove has to gently dissuade from spending her savings on a plane ticket to Finland show less

The thing about travelling, of course, is that no matter how far you go you bring yourself along whether you want to or not. That sounds trite, I know. After reading these 12 short stories I'm not sure it's entirely true, though. Most of the stories here are based around travelling - whether it's people abandoning their lives, looking to leave everything behind as in the title story, people returning home after a long absence as in the darkly funny "The Woman Who Borrowed Memories", or just going for a walk with your son behind your house as in the heartrending "The Woods". She even takes a successful stab at post-apocalyptic science fiction in "Shopping".

There's a great passage in Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive on show more the subject of being alone as opposed to being lonesome. Lonesome's a whole other thing. Incurable. Terminal. A hole in your heart you could drive a semi truck through. I think Jansson would have understood it, but not necessarily agreed; hell, Jansson was in a relationship with the woman who inspired Too-Ticky (and to whom the book is dedicated) for almost 50 years, she doesn't have a problem with self-sufficience.



So while her characters tend to fall more on the "lonesome" end of the scale - whether they're life-long loners, or in tight-knit groups or committed relationships where they suddenly see the limits of what you can share with someone ("The Gulls", dear god, "The Gulls") - and many of them are clearly hurting from it, there's also a sense of strength, of unexpected companionship, of of understated realisation. Travelling makes them see who they are more clearly, be more aware of what they've got in their knapsack. Wenn jemand eine Reise tut, da kann er was erzählen, even if you only tell yourself (or lie to yourself). Some of them, most likely, won't survive this realisation unharmed. Others will be stronger for it. Others will find a brand new set of self-delusions to lean on. Like all of Jansson's best works, the best stories here don't have a simple lesson or twist at the end; they just are, with a warmth and subtle humour that still knows when to be cruel. show less

Tove Jansson’s short stories, like much of her longer work for adults, is written in a spare, direct style that eschews symbol and metaphor in favour of concrete particulars and unsentimental realism. The quest for unadorned simplicity is consuming, as evidenced by the way it creeps into the very theme and content of stories such as “The Hothouse” or “Travelling Light”, the title story of this collection. It is a goal that is sometimes best reached by not aiming at it directly.

In “An Eightieth Birthday” a young couple engage with art in theory and practice on the occasion of the 80th birthday party of the young woman’s grandmother. ‘Success’, in artistic terms, as the story makes plain, is a fraught question whose show more answers are various and not always appetising. Jansson explores more of the darker side of her characters’ personalities in some of the stories in this collection. The disquieting “The Woman Who Borrowed Memories” will leave you on edge and “The PE Teacher’s Death” and “The Gulls” are almost burdened by the near mental collapse of one or more central character. There is even, perhaps oddly in this collection, a seeming post-apocalyptic story of two co-dependent marginal characters struggling to meet their end in the best way they can manage.

While the themes and content of the stories in this collection are less cohesive than other Jansson collections, the writing remains crisp and pure throughout. Like the endless summer light on the skerry islands off Finland’s coast, or Jansson’s unsentimental presentation of children (especially in “The Summer Child”), the stories here will be both familiar and new to readers of Jansson’s other works for adults. Gently recommended. show less

Tove Janssons' fiction for adults is a rare site in Australian bookshops, but English translations are starting to trickle through.

Travelling Light is a collection around a theme of characters moving to another place in search of peace and refuge, only to find that their new environment discomforting as well. Jansson finds dry and gentle humour in the most everyday of situations: three old ladies enjoying a tea party, a young city boy holidaying with a rural foster-family, two old men sharing a hothouse bench.

The stories are disarmingly simple and gentle, and often conclude with a return to the banal, for example "she put it to soak in the bathtub". This neat device has the effect of signalling a return to life's realities after show more confronting the fact the travelling light does not mean being free of life's awkward challenges. show less

Originally published in 1987 when Tove Jansson was 73, about half the stories in Travelling Light focus on the conditions of growing older that force all of us to make accommodations: marginalization, loneliness, relocation, even patronization. Jansson brilliantly explores these issues with a light touch and always leaves the conclusions to open speculation by the reader. The subjects of the other stories range from the account of an unpleasant child who intrudes upon a family's summer idyll and the imaginative adventures a pair of brothers have playing Tarzan in the forest to a friend visiting her old roommate and youthful haunts. The threads that tie all the stories together are the necessity for passion and the danger of nostalgia. show more As Ali Smith points out in her introduction about a character in one of the stories: "she learns exactly why we move on, why nostalgia is deathly, why we can't and mustn't go backwards in life." Highly recommended. show less

‘’Light is Jansson’s insistence that no man or woman is an island. No matter how much we may long to escape others, we can’t; and even the simplest daily act of existing in the world, living with others, never mind anything more intimate, is fraught with alienation. The collection revels in this paradox, the human longing for solitude versus the human need for contact.’’

Ali Smith’s beautiful Introduction says it all, don’t you think?

‘’Dear child, make sure you bring your young man so I can have a look at him, but don’t go buying some expensive and unnecessary gift. At my age, I’ve got pretty much everything I want, plus better taste than most of my progeny.’’

An Eightieth Birthday: A special birthday party show more provides the opportunity for a discussion on Art, the dreams of youth and staying true to your convictions.

The Summer Child: A boy with strong beliefs and principles asks difficult questions and causes disarray during the summer holidays of a rather ignorant family.

A Foreign City: An elderly man has arrived in a foreign country to visit his sgrandspn. Soon, problems arise. His hat disappears, he forgets his hotel. Without even a basic knowledge of the country’s language, he has to rely on accidental meetings and the kindness of strangers. The lesson of the story: When you travel, learn the basics.

‘’But all the swallows flew away. And it’s like that old saying; when the swallows go, it’s because the home’s no longer a happy one.’’

The Woman Who Borrowed Memories: A suffocating story of a famous artist who accepts the invitation of an old ‘friend’ whose only purpose is to vilify and harm her. Jealousy and malice are so powerful…

Travelling Light: A difficult man decides to withdraw from everything and everyone, yet his decision forces him to reexamine his relationships and perceptions.

‘’Ladies, you waste your time on inessentials. When we’ve finished our coffee, I think we should devote ourselves to the contemplation of nightfall.’’

The Garden of Eden: Viktoria arrives in a village near Alicante, in Spain, to visit her goddaughter. Suddenly alone and haunted by a now extinguished friendship, she finds herself involved in the strange dispute between two women. Will she be able to reconcile the two opposites? A beautiful story that reminded me of a more toned-down Tennessee Williams.

Shopping: A sad story of obsession, fear, unseen threats and the unbearable rift between a wife and a husband.

‘’August arrived with its black nights. When the sunset cast its red light between the tree trunks we would run home because we didn’t want to see the darkness fall.’’
The Forest: The forest becomes a jungle as a young boy discovers the story of Tarzan in a summer of make-believe.

The PE Teacher’s Death: The tragic suicide of a PE teacher exposes the secrets of a community and the constant search for the unattainable thing called ‘’Happiness’’.

The Gulls: A brilliant woman is trying to cope with her impossible husband, a heartless coward. A story that could have been exasperating becomes beautiful in its sadness through the haunting descriptions of the island and the slow summer evenings.

The Hothouse: An elderly man is showered with the love of his family but he is still suffocated. His visits to the Hothouse and the moments of solitude are his treasures. One day, he discovers that he isn’t the only one to occupy his favourite bench. This is the beginning of an unlikely friendship and the heart of a story that raises the questions of ageing and finding the balance between willing solitude and the company of another human being.

Correspondence: The moving letters of a Japanese girl to her favourite writer. Pages of pure beauty!

‘’And when we land, it won’t be Papa’s island anymore, it’ll be ours, for weeks and weeks, and the city and everyone in it will fade away, till in the end they won’t even exist or have any hold on us at all. Just pure peace and quiet. And now in the spring the days and nights can be windless, soundless, somehow transparent…’’

Wondrous translation by Silvester Mazzarella.

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2589541.html

A collection of short stories by the great Finnish writer, a surprising number of which are about psychological manipulation and trauma - something I picked up also in her novel, The True Deceiver; the most memorable here is "The Woman Who Borrowed Memories", itself the title of another collection, whose central character returns to visit an old friend to find that her past has been ruthlessly appropriated. There are other lovely pieces too, the opening story, "An Eightieth Birthday" about a young woman taking her new-ish boyfriend to a family party, and the heartbreaking "Correspondence", supposedly letters to Jansson from a Japanese fan, which closes the collection. This would be a good show more starter pack for people who otherwise only know the Moomins. show less