Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When the sky is blue and the air is sharp, the world calls for Moominland Midwinter. I read it outside until the light began to fade andI was too cold to read. And as I walked home, I thought about all of the different words for snow that I knew and how different cold can be and how much each footstep I took felt a little bit like I was walking along Moomin Valley, waiting for the world to wake up around me.
Moominland Midwinter is so strange and so wonderful. I like books that make you have to chase their meaning, that make you succumb to the delicious peculiarities of their storytelling, to wallow as much in the knowing as you do the not knowing. It begins with something unexpected: Moomintroll wakes up early from his hibernation. And while the rest of his family sleeps, he sets out to understand the brave new world that he has found himself in. There are new friends to make, new wonders to discover, and the brutal edge of Winter to realise.
The Moomins make me happy but this book makes me marvel. It is dark and experimental and full of an honest magic. And when it gets to the Lady of the Cold, the spirit of Winter and somebody who you can’t look directly at without freezing, it becomes even more magical. I think there is something wonderful to be found in truth and being honest about brutality, even. Winter is hard and this world is not full of rainbows for some of the smallest souls in the world at this time. Jansson is genuine and honest about this and so you get something rather eloquent indeed.
There’s such magic here, and it’s a magic that’s wrapped in thick snow and soulful illustrations and forebears who live behind stoves and Little Creeps and it’s all so inventive and fiercely truthful and eloquent that I adore it rather immensely indeed.
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Daisy May Johnson 