Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson
From a renowned artist and writer, a deeply personal nature journal about the island that informed her many works, with paintings from her longtime partner, artist Tuulikki Tooti Pietil . In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by Brunstr m, a maverick fisherman, raced to build a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, where for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the visual artist, Tuulikki Tooti Pietil , lived, painted, and wrote, energized by the solitude and shifting seascapes. The island's flora, fauna, and weather patterns provided deep inspiration which can be seen reflected in all of Jansson's work, most famously in her bestselling novel The Summer Book and her longstanding comic strip and novels for children, Moomin. Tove's signature spare, quirky prose, and Tooti's subtle ink washes and aquatints combine to form a work of meditative beauty, a chronicle of living peacefully in nature and observing the island's ecology and character. Notes from an Island is both a work of artistic collaboration and an homage to the deep love the two women shared. One feels as if Jansson's journal, with Tooti's sketches tucked inside, has been unearthed like a treasure from under a pile of old quilts in the back of their rustic cabin.Praise for the essay, The Island
At once a short story, an essay, and a prose poem, 'The Island' reads both like a sketch for The Summer Book and a vignette of Klovharun ... the text seems to change following mysterious tides from a timeless present to an urgent past. --Hernan Diaz, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Praise for Tove Jansson
It could be said that everything she wrote is, in one way or another, about the creative interactions between art and reality or art and nature.--The Guardian
Her style is not at all 'poetic'--quite the contrary. It is prose of the very highest order; it is pure prose. Through its quiet clarity we see unreachable depths, threatening darkness, promised treasures.--Ursula K. LeGuin, The Guardian
Tove Jansson was a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry.--Philip Pullman
It's hard to describe the astonishing achievement of Jansson's artistry.--Ali Smith
ALEXANDER CHEE is the author of The Queen of the Night, Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Create an Autobiographical Novel, among other works. He is a contributing editor at the New Republic and a Virginia Quarterly Review editor at large. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including The Best American Essays 2016, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, T Magazine, Slate, and Vulture. He has received resident fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri, and Amtrak, as well as a 2003 Whiting Prize, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in writing, and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship. He is an English associate professor at Dartmouth College.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781643264790 |
| ISBN 10 | 1643264796 |
| Title | Notes from an Island |
| Author | Tove Jansson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Timber Press (OR) |
| Year published | 2024-10-22 |
| Number of pages | 128 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |