A Winter Book: Selected Stories by Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson
Language: English
Pages: 2006
ISBN: 0954899520
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A book collection of some of Tove Jansson's best loved and most famous stories. Drawn from youth and older age, and spanning most of the twentieth century, this newly translated selection provides a thrilling showcase of the great Finnish writer's prose, scattered with insights and home truths.
room at the end. At first it was the nasty scraping sound made by shovels. Then the snow fell down over the windows and grey light came in everywhere. Somebody tramped past outside and came to the next window and let in more light. It was awful. The scraping sound went along the whole row of windows until the lamps were burning as if at a funeral. Outside snow was falling. The trees were standing in rows and were as black as they had been before and they let the snow fall on them and the fringe
Yours sincerely, Klara Hi Steffy! Thanks for the bark boat, it’s beautiful and it’s lovely to have it. I tried it out in the bath and it balances perfectly. Don’t worry about that report, tell Daddy and Mummy it’s sometimes much more important to be able to work with your hands and make something beautiful. I’m sorry about the cat. But if she lived to be seventeen she was probably quite tired and no longer very well. The words you wrote for her grave aren’t bad but you must take
mean, you feel depressed, so you sit down and think, ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter, there’s nothing I can do about it, it’s just the way things are.’ Isn’t that the truth? What else shall I tell you – oh, yes, I’ve got rid of my pot plants and I’m trying to learn a little French. You know, I’ve always admired you; you speak the language so perfectly. What’s that elegant way they have of ending a letter? – Chère madame, I enclose you, no, me, in your – oh you know. I’m just a beginner. Chère
shouts and Daddy attacks the chair. During the day it is covered with a rug so that you can’t see what it looks like. After the wicker chair, Daddy doesn’t want to play his balalaika any more. Then I just go to sleep. The next day everybody is still there and they try to say nice things to me: “Good day pretty maiden,” “How lovely ’twould be if you’d come a-walking this morning with me.” Mummy gets presents. Ruokokoski once gave her half a pound of butter and another time she got a dozen eggs
no one here to scare, everybody just skates faster, strange shadows making scrunching and squeaking noises as they pass. The lamps sway to and fro in the wind. If they went out we should keep going round and round in the dark, and the music would play on and on and gradually the channel in the ice would get wider and wider, yawning and breathing more heavily, and the whole harbour would be black water with only an island of ice on which we would go round and round for ever and ever amen. Ramona