The Listener
Tove Jansson
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: B00K4JT6DE
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A unique and authentic voice that speaks to the reader across time and culture, heart to heart.' Boyd Tonkin, The Independent Aunt Gerda - the good listener - fears the encroaching forgetfulness of old age. Her solution is to create an artwork that will record and, inevitably, betray the secrets long confided in her. So begins Jansson's short story debut, a tour de force of scalpel-sharp narration that takes us from a disquieting homage to the artist Edward Gorey, to perfect evocations of childhood innocence and recklessness, to a city ravaged by storms, or the slow halting thaw of spring. These stories are gifts of originality and depth. In her first ever story collection, Jansson reveals the clarity of vision and light philosophical touch that were to become her hallmarks. The Listener was published in Swedish in 1971 but appears here for the first time in English. Sort Of Books have also published translations of seven other Tove Jansson books for adults: the novels The Summer Book, Fair Play and The True Deceiver; and the story collections Travelling Light, Art in Nature, Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir) and A Winter Book.
the evening, they turned blue. No one called and no one came. It seemed to her the window was a great eye looking out over the city and the harbour and a strip of the gulf under ice. The new silence and emptiness was not entirely a loss; it was something of a relief. Aunt Gerda felt like a balloon, untied, soaring off its own way. But, she thought, it’s a balloon that’s bouncing against the ceiling and can’t get free. She understood that this was no way to live; human beings are not built to
it down in a neat little oval. Aunt Gerda noted thefts of money, of children, of work and love and trust. She remembered those who drowned one another in bad conscience or who froze each other out. She drew their lines and erased them to make them more precise. Time was no longer bifurcated, and she listened only to her inner voice. Her memory delivered up tones of voice and silences, faces that clenched and went naked and then closed again, and all the mouths that talked and talked. Aunt Gerda
together softly, quickly, almost whispering, hardly moving their lips. She looked at their hands, which were very small with narrow, light-brown fingers – tiny, beautiful paws. She felt like a large horse. “We are sorry,” said the interpreter, also in English. “Mr Shimomura does not write. He never writes. No, no.” He smiled. They both smiled. He bowed his head gently and apologetically and gazed at her steadily. His eyes were absolutely black. “Mr Shimomura draws,” the interpreter added. “Mr
He’s going to blow it up. He’ll light the fuse and the flames will creep along fast, and he’ll stand and look at it and then turn and run! No more landmark. Heaven and earth will fly apart and, later, people will come to the skerry and step ashore and shake their heads and say, “This is where it happened.” The tiny inlet was not a good spot for the boat, but they had to tie up somewhere. At least there was a cable running across it, and the stern line ought to hold. Nordman hooked a grapnel to
said his wife. “Now, take care of yourself. And call me from the general store if there’s anything you need.” They kissed, and he climbed onto the bus. It was afternoon, and sleeting. Stella didn’t wave, but she stood and watched until the bus was hidden by the trees. Then she closed the gate and walked back up to her house. He recognised the bus stop and the evergreen hedge, but it had grown higher and greyer. He was also surprised that the hill was so steep. The road went straight up, bordered