Volume 39, Number 21 · December 17, 1992
Undiscovered Country
By Alison Lurie
Comet in Moominland
by Tove Jansson, translated by Elizabeth Portch
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 192 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Finn Family Moomintroll
by Tove Jansson, translated by Elizabeth Portch
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 174 pp., $3.50 (paper)
Moominsummer Madness
by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Warburton
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 159 pp., $4.50 (paper)
Moominland Midwinter
by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Warburton
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 159 pp., $4.50 (paper)
To most Americans Finland is a strange and remote country. When they think of it they imagine a largely empty landscape: frozen snow-smothered forests, gray rocky shores, icy lakes, and black rivers pass before their inner eyes to the accompaniment of the melancholy tone poems of Sibelius. Some, though, have a more benign vision. Because they know the children's stories of Tove Jansson, they see Finland as bright with birds and flowers, and inhabited by fantastic creatures: the Moomintroll family and their sometimes charming, sometimes difficult or even obnoxious neighbors, so different from us in appearance yet so much like people we already know.
Review, 3223 words
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