I have been reading The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Its a book about an elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter spending a summer together on an island in the gulf of Finland. I was drawn to reading this book as I can see many parallels between the book and the residency that I am about to embark upon with Naoise in Tampere.
I love the sophistication of Tove Jansson’s story telling her honesty and observations and clear use of language. Her writings are not at all sentimental. I love how she captures the slow pace of time spent with a child in the summer months, their relationship, what they do, its conflicts and its peace.
I have been a fan of Tove Jansson’s writing ever since having the Moomin books read to me as a child by my mother. More recently I have enjoyed reading the Moomin stories to Naoise.
Recently I experimented with asking Naoise to do the same thing as the Grandmother requests of the child; Â “Draw the most awfullest thing you can think of, and take as much time as you possibly can” (The Summer Book, Tove Hansson, pages 45-47).
This is what Naoise drew:
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‘ I don’t have the strength to go on loving him but I think about him all the time’
Lack of sentimentality but something else ….
Made me think about how we project our needs for love and resent the lack of love being returned! The distortion into a familiar Victorian melodrama of romantic love often reenacted with our children and partners, and the way Tove was using her stories to perhaps explore theses things.
The soft blubbery moomins with their maternal features, sort of distorted and ugly? to conceal our real adoration of the breast?
The sweet innocence of the stories, safe adventures in Lala land.
The toxic stuff in the ambivalence of love leaving us with so much to deal with….
Grandmother and granddaughter on an island, sound like a very good place to reflect, a joining of generations and femaleness.