Notes from an Island - by Tove Jansson (Hardcover)

About the Book

Translation of: Anteckningar frêan en èo and èOn.

Book Synopsis

From a renowned artist and writer, a deeply personal nature journal about the island that informed her many works, with paintings from her longtime partner, artist Tuulikki "Tooti" Pietilä.

In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by Brunström, a maverick fisherman, raced to build a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, where for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the visual artist, Tuulikki "Tooti" Pietilä, lived, painted, and wrote, energized by the solitude and shifting seascapes. The island's flora, fauna, and weather patterns provided deep inspiration which can be seen reflected in all of Jansson's work, most famously in her bestselling novel The Summer Book and her longstanding comic strip and novels for children, Moomin. Tove's signature spare, quirky prose, and Tooti's subtle ink washes and aquatints combine to form a work of meditative beauty, a chronicle of living peacefully in nature and observing the island's ecology and character. Notes from an Island is both a work of artistic collaboration and an homage to the deep love the two women shared. One feels as if Jansson's journal, with Tooti's sketches tucked inside, has been unearthed like a treasure from under a pile of old quilts in the back of their rustic cabin.

Praise for the essay, "The Island"

"At once a short story, an essay, and a prose poem, 'The Island' reads both like a sketch for The Summer Book and a vignette of Klovharun ... the text seems to change following mysterious tides from a timeless present to an urgent past." --Hernan Diaz, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

Praise for Tove Jansson

"It could be said that everything she wrote is, in one way or another, about the creative interactions between art and reality or art and nature."--The Guardian

"Her style is not at all 'poetic'--quite the contrary. It is prose of the very highest order; it is pure prose. Through its quiet clarity we see unreachable depths, threatening darkness, promised treasures."--Ursula K. LeGuin, The Guardian

"Tove Jansson was a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry."--Philip Pullman

"It's hard to describe the astonishing achievement of Jansson's artistry."--Ali Smith

Review Quotes

"Notes from an Island is a sweeping, meditative exploration of time spent in nature." --BookPage

"Like the books featuring her beloved Moomins, the nature journal Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson moves fluidly between modes, alternating between tones of detached humor and earnest poignancy. This beautiful volume represents the most transparent collaboration between Jansson...and her partner in life and art, Tuulikki Pietilä"--Shelf Awareness

"This elegantly produced book began as a collection of etchings and drawings done by Pietilä, accompanied now by the diary entries, notes, and correspondence the author...Jansson brings to life the flora and fauna of their remote home, along with the struggles of living in such an enchanted but storm-battered and fog-enshrouded place. Notes from an Island is a gem." --Air Mail

"A pleasure for Jansson's many fans, and a lovely memoir of hardscrabble island life." --Kirkus

"Both a memoir and a love letter to all things wild and weathered."--New Statesman

"If you never see me again in life after this book is published, it is because I left to find an island of my own at last."--Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

"These wry, winsome autobiographical sketches demonstrate the couple's virtuosity in the art of living...as evocative as a long-lost coastline glimpsed through mist." --Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was born in Helsinki into Finland's Swedish-speaking minority; her father was a sculptor and her mother a graphic designer and illustrator. Jansson's most famous creation is Moomintroll, a hippopotamus-like character with a dreamy disposition who stars in Moomin, the long-running comic strip and series of books for children that have been translated throughout the world, inspiring films, several television series, an opera, and theme parks in Finland and Japan. Jansson wrote eleven novels and short-story collections for adults, including The Summer Book, The True Deceiver, Fair Play, and The Woman Who Borrowed Memories and is widely beloved as a leading voice in contemporary global literature. In 1994 she was awarded the Prize of the Swedish Academy.