Harare Review of Books

128 pages. Expected pub. date: October 22, 2024 from Timber Press. Non-fiction.

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Isn’t it everyone’s fantasy, to get away from it all and live somewhere deserted, relying on your own hardiness, skills, and smarts? There’s something appealing about it. Well, I loved this, Tove Jansson’s account of, with her partner, “Tooti,” building (initially illegally) and (mostly) summering on an isolated island, Klovharun, in the Gulf of Finland, from the 1960s. It’s wry, and austere, but tells of a love of life and all its minutiae. And it gave me a feeling like that from the old explorer books I loved as a child.

Life on the island has its own rhythm: the storms that come by; the birds, whose territory it really is; occasional salvaging trips to nearby islands; the year they watch (or try to) the sea ice break up; Tooti’s work, capturing the moods of the island in etchings and washes (some of which are included in the book); fishing; the fog; changes in the sea; the woodyard; the silence between them—they eventually find themselves whispering, or not talking at all. Gradually growing old.

There are also other fun characters, apart from the island itself: Brunström, the independent-minded, quirky fisherman who helps them build, with his mate Sjöblom; for a while, there’s also Ham, Jannson’s mother, who gets washed away one night with the cat, Psipsina (all ends well, mostly) (but there’s the time that Psipsina jumps into wet tar and really hates everyone for a while). And there’s the massive mast that Brunström finds and nearly loses.

I found it so easy to fall into the rhythms of this prose, of life on Klovharun, beautifully described here, in Jansson’s words, Pietilä’s pictures, and Brunström’s occsional diary entries. Notes From an Island is undemanding, and yet manages to draw you in. A wonnderful diversion.

Thanks to Timber Press and NetGalley for an early DRC.

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