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Moominpappa at Sea (Moomins Fiction)

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There was the sea – his sea – going past, wave after wave, foaming recklessly, raging furiously, but, somehow, tranquil at the same time. This is about 42 kilometres (26 mi) east of Helsinki, and 11 kilometres (7 mi) south of the coast of Finland; though no island exists there in real life. Everything of Life is in there with a simplicity and depth of expression that will touch you to the core. The stories were complex and I always had a sense that I was missing something - although I always enjoyed Tove Jansson's wonderful illustrations.

When the Moomin family members need a change of scenery, they decide to take up residence in a lighthouse. So without giving too much more of the storyline away, Moominpappa is a pretentious git, Moominmamma needs to go on some suffragette marches (though, to be fair, the author is using her comments as sarcastic digs) and Moomin could do with being less of a pillock. Maybe it was just the way I was reading it but it almost felt like it was veering into gothic horror territory at times, with the Groke stalking Moomintroll, the island seeming to come alive around the family and the weather seemingly consciously acting against them.I suspect this lost something in the translation, some parts didn't read easily but the ideas and the beautiful illustrations more than made up for it. My, on the other hand, is just as we need her to be; irrepressible and just a little bit wicked, often adding a touch of humor just when things get dark. Tove Jansson received many prestigious awards during her lifetime, including the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal.

This was an enjoyable piece of escapism, anyone who has longed to get away from everyday life and challenge themselves to live on an island will enjoy this story of starting again from scratch. This starting point isn't dissimilar to 'The Secret of the Hattinfatteners' from 'Tales from Moominvalley', where Moominpappa experiences a sudden powerful unhappiness with his home-life and feels compelled to escape. Jansson's illustration show the Moomins as tiny figures in a huge landscape, surrounded by sea and sky. Almost fifty years after first reading this book, I am bowled over by how well Jansson captures both the midlife crisis and depression and therefore amazed that the book, despite such adult themes, still spoke to me all those years ago. It's a powerful and believable story about depression, and I found it moving and relevant to my life, but it's so bleak.He then tries to find purpose by becoming the lighthouse keeper and then later by understanding the sea. As the cherry on the top, Moomintroll came to form a strange relationship, a little scary one covered with shades of pity, with Groke.

The book was also sadly beautiful in its own way, but I don't think this is one I'd read over and over again. A peculiar only-sort-of-for-children late Moomin novel where the family attempts of combat leisure-ennui by moving to a ragged lighthouse island far out in the ocean. He's disappointed to find it already inhabited by ants, and asks Little My for help with getting them to move elsewhere.As they discover their new home, the family also discover surprising, and wonderfully funny, new things about themselves.

Still some strange moments of magic and wonder, of course, but tempered by cynicism and a warm-but-realistic sense of the petty and no-so-petty impulses that drive people. The book is based primarily around the character of Moominpappa, who was heavily inspired by Jansson's father, Viktor Jansson. As with all of later Moomins books, the tone is overwhelmingly melancholic: more than anything else, it is about loneliness.If Moominland Midwinter is about a journey from a place of depression to one of hope and joy, Moominpappa at Sea is about acceptance. The books all have a moral core which is accepting individual idiosyncrasies while at the same time feeling that there is a sense of appropriateness to things.

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