A review by markvb
Lyssnerskan by Tove Jansson

emotional funny mysterious relaxing fast-paced

Some fun stories, no great epic tales but rather some more casual lighthearted short fragments of people's, especially artists', lives in different situations completely unrelated to each other. What really appealed to me in this work was really how well it was able to capture the feeling of Finland and being Finnish to me as a Finnish person, I can't say if this idea would translate at all to a non-Finnish reader but at least to me it is the glue that ties the collection together and makes it seem like a cohesive work even though the stories are unrelated. Also, I don't want to make it seem like this is the only thing the collection has going on for it, I particularly enjoyed the stories where Jansson dipped her foot into the absurd/surreal notably on Stormen and Den Andre. Some of my other favourites were Svart-vitt, En Kärlekshistoria, Sprängningen and Ekorren. I didn't feel as strongly for some of the other stories but nevertheless really enjoyed this collection.