NOTES FROM AN ISLAND

The renowned Finnish author returns to the Baltic archipelago that formed the setting for her 1972 novel The Summer Book.

As in her novel, Jansson grew up with a spirited grandmother who wasn’t shy of doing hard work and draining a beer when it was done. Here Jansson (1914–2001), author of the beloved Moomin series of children’s books, moves a few islands farther away from shore, arriving at a “fierce little skerry” called Klovharun. Whereas Jansson had shared the earlier island with her grandmother, mother (“Ham,” for her maiden name, Hammarsten), and brother, here she makes a home on Klovharun with the woman who will be her life companion, Tuulikki (“Tooti”) Pietilä. An accomplished graphic artist—her abstract work punctuates these pages—Tooti is never short of opinions, telling Jansson, “Well, for once you could stick to the facts a little.” The facts are abundant, as Jansson describes dynamiting out a basement for the essentially illegal house that she and Tooti build, assured by a bureaucrat-hating friend that “the law says that no building can be torn down if the builder has framed as high as the roof beam.” That’s good incentive, given that winter is fast approaching. One of Jansson’s great realizations is that they are mere guests on this difficult land of black rock and white sand and snow, that nothing they can build will ever last. (Says Ham, wearily, of Baltic weather reports, “All the facts and statistics are idiotic, because the sea does precisely whatever it wants.”) Aging as the years pass, Jansson and Tooti return to the city, but not before seeding their little island house with delightful notes (“Don’t close the damper, it will rust shut”) for the next person to come along.

A pleasure for Jansson’s many fans, and a lovely memoir of hardscrabble island life.