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Moominvalley in November
Moominvalley in November
Moominvalley in November
Ebook184 pages1 hour

Moominvalley in November

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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Tove Jansson's Moomin characters and books are admired the world over. In the United States the series beginning with Finn Family Moomintroll (first published in English in 1945) has accumulated generations of fans. Since Farrar, Straus and Giroux began reissuing the books in 1989, grateful readers old and new have been thrilled to have the stories available again. At last the final installment is being published – oddly, the only book that features none of the Moomin family themselves, though it does take place at their house. There familiar characters converge – Snufkin, the Hemulen, Fillyjonk, and others – seeking out the Moomins' welcoming company, only to find them absent. All remain at the house, all have very different personalities that clash often, but something about their homey cohabitation during the icy winter changes each visitor in a gratifying way. As The Times Literary Supplement put it, Moominvalley in November is "possibly the cleverest of the Moomin books."

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 2, 2014
ISBN9781466871649
Moominvalley in November
Author

Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson (1914 - 2001) was born in Helsinki to artist parents. She was to become a celebrated artist, political cartoonist and author, but she is best known as the creator of the Moomins, one of the most successful and beloved children's book series ever written. Inspired by summers spent on the islands off Finland and Sweden, Tove created the unique world of Moominvalley and all its inhabitants. The Moomins and The Great Flood, her first book to feature the Moomins, published in 1945. Tove went on to publish twelve Moomin books between 1945 and 1977, which have sold in their millions and been translated into over forty languages. In the 1950's the Moomins became a successful cartoon strip, which was to feature in newspapers all over the world. As the Moomins' fame grew, they began to appear in television series, plays, films and a varied merchandise program soon followed. Tove also painted throughout her life and wrote novels and short stories, including the acclaimed Summer Book. But the Moomin world was never far away. As Tove said, "You feel a cold wind on your legs when you step outside Moomin Valley," In 1966, Tove received the Hans Christian Andersen Award for her lasting contribution to children's literature.

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Reviews for Moominvalley in November

Rating: 4.301886882264151 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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 wonderful series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved this book. It's strange and different amongst the Moomin books because of the absence of the actuall Moomin family, but, having read the other books, I knew where they were.
    Janssons style is poetic and loving as always. Each character ends up getting what s/he really needs.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Moominvalley in November was a charming read, full of a good fall atmosphere. I've heard about Jansson's stuff for years, but for whatever reason I never thought to look for Moomin books at the library -- and then I saw this one sitting there, cover out, in the YA section.

    It took me a little while to warm up to it, between the writing and the unfamiliar characters, but by the time I got to Fillyjonk I was hooked.

    Rabbit read this one too: I left it on the table and she saw it and read a chapter then declared it "weird." I said OKAY and didn't bother trying to dissuade her, and then two days later, after seeing me read it off and on, she decide she wanted to read it, after all.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Moominfamily have gone away. No one knows where they are. Several people come to their house hoping for one reason or another to find them and some of them stay for quite awhile, sleeping in their beds and forming an odd waiting society but eventually for one reason and another most of them go away again. A strange autumnal book full of a kind of satisfying emptiness that feels somehow Novemberish.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A good, surprising end to the Moomin stories. The Moomin family has left Moominvalley and other, all somehow awkward and difficult people, enter the scene. Not that much happens in this book. It's just a mixed bunch of people coming -- all pretty much on their own -- to terms with a new, at first frightening situation, and dealing with change in their lives. Though Finnish November can be grey and depressing, the characters in this book all make it, one way or another.I tend to look for metaphores of childhood's end whenever I read the last part of a series of childrens' books. In this book it's very strong, with the Moomin family representing the good memories of childhood. By the way, I don't (I refuse to) believe that the Moomins actually returned to Moominvalley as they appear to do in the end of this book. I like to think it's just Toft's imagination, a reminder that one can return to one's childhood in one's memories.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A Moomin story with no Moomins? Well, not quite. The family is there, but as a hope, an aim and an absence.A group fetches up at the Moominhouse, each hoping to find something from the family. The family not being there, they instead find themselves in an ad hoc family- one which is not entirely harmonious.Each of the characters seems self-directed and self-regarding, but through a series of negotiations and awkward situations, they manage to live together. They none of them meet the family, but this seems unimportant by the end.This books is close in feel to the adult books Sort Of Books have issued recently. Not much happens, but you are still left with a sense of things being worked out.It is interesting to reflect that this is the last Moomin book Jansson wrote, around the time of her mother's death. I don't know for sure that knowing this affected my reading of it, but I did find it much more reflective and serious than the other books, with perhaps the exception of Moominpappa at Sea
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As I understand it this was one of the last Moomin books Tove Jansson wrote, and they seem to have been getting more melancholy and grown-up as they go along. This one is really quite unhappy, with characters often feeling embarassed or ashamed for one another -- not at all the happy accepting environment of the earlier stories. The Moomin family has left the valley, and lots of the odd hangers-on (The Hemulen, the Fillyjonk, Mymble, and so on) come to visit in the autumn. Only without the stabilising influence of Moominmama and Moominpapa, they all get on each others nerves and nothing quite goes the way it should do.What's particularly interesting is to see the characters growing up in subtle little ways. They're becoming less predictable and childlike, but this involves acquiring adult insecurities and unhappinesses. Despite a sort-of-happy ending, the dominant tone is discomfort (rather than the more innocent melancholy that we expect).The writing is still as lovely as ever, though, and there are flashes of the same careless humour. Here's the arrival of a new character, Grandpa-Grumble:"He was frightfully old and forgot things very easily. One dark autumn morning he woke up and had forgotten what his name was. It's a little sad when you forget other people's names but it's lovely to be able to completely forget your own."And, more in the general character of this particular offering:"The Hemulen woke up slowly and recognised himself and wished he had been someone he didn't know."I'm glad I read it, but I'd choose one of the others to start the kids off on.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another gentle story about the Moomins, except that this one didn't actually have the Moomins in it. It had a hemulen, a fillyjonk, Toft, Mymble, and Grandpa-Grumble, along with Snufkin, but no Moomins. Still, a sweet story and one my kids thoroughly enjoyed hearing at bedtime.

Book preview

Moominvalley in November - Tove Jansson

Chapter 1

Snufkin

Early one morning in Moominvalley Snufkin woke up in his tent with the feeling that autumn had come and that it was time to break camp.

Breaking camp in this way comes with a hop, skip, and a jump! All of a sudden everything is different, and if you’re going to move on you’re careful to make use of every single minute: you pull up your tent pegs and douse the fire quickly before anyone can stop you or start asking questions, you start running, pulling on your rucksack as you go, and finally you’re on your way and suddenly quite calm, like a solitary tree with every single leaf completely still. Your camping site is an empty rectangle of bleached grass. Later in the morning your friends wake up and say: he’s gone away, autumn’s coming.

Snufkin padded along calmly, the forest closed around him and it began to rain. The rain fell on his green hat and on his raincoat, which was also green, it pittered and pattered everywhere and the forest wrapped him in a gentle and exquisite loneliness.

There were many valleys along the coast. The mountains rolled down to the sea in long stately curves to promontories and bays which cut deep into the wild country. In one of these valleys a Fillyjonk lived all by herself. Snufkin had met many Fillyjonks in his time and knew that they had to do things in their own way and according to their own silly rules. But he was never so quiet as when he went past the house of a Fillyjonk.

The fence had straight and pointed posts and the gate was locked. The garden was quite empty. The clothesline had been taken in and the woodpile had gone. There was no hammock and no garden furniture. There was none of the charming disorder that generally surrounds a house in summer, no rake, no bucket, no left-behind hat, no saucer for the cat’s milk, none of the other homey things that lie around waiting for the next day and make the house look welcoming and lived in.

Fillyjonk knew that autumn had arrived, and she shut herself up inside. Her house looked completely closed and deserted. But she was there, deep deep inside behind the high impenetrable walls and the dense fir trees that hid her windows.

The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It’s a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you’ve got in as many supplies as you can. It’s nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won’t find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.

There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind.

Fillyjonk started to beat carpets at the back of her house. She put all she’d got into it with a measured frenzy and everybody could hear that she loved beating carpets. Snufkin walked on, lit his pipe, and thought: They’re waking up in Moominvalley. Moominpappa is winding up the clock and tapping the barometer. Moominmamma is lighting the stove. Moomintroll goes out on to the verandah and sees that my camping site is deserted. He looks in the mailbox down at the bridge and it’s empty, too. I forgot my good-bye letter, I didn’t have time. But all the letters I write are the same: I’ll be back in April, keep well. I’m going away but I’ll be back in the spring, look after yourself. He knows anyway.

And Snufkin forgot all about Moomintroll as easily as that.

At dusk he came to the long bay that lies in perpetual shadow between the mountains. Deep in the bay some early lights were shining where a group of houses huddled together.

No one was out in the rain.

It was here that the Hemulen, Mymble, and Gaffsie lived, and under every roof lived someone who had decided to stay put, people who wanted to stay indoors. Snufkin crept past their backyards, keeping in the shadows, and he was as quiet as he could be because he didn’t want to talk to a soul. Big houses and little houses all very close to each other, some were joined together and shared the same gutters and the same trash bins, looked in at each other’s windows, and smelled their food. The chimneys and high gables and the drainpipes, and below, the well-worn paths leading from door to door. Snufkin walked quickly and silently and thought: oh all you houses, how I hate

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