Another short book by Jansson, this time an unnerving novel set in a small Swedish community where a writer is exploited by one of her neighbours; lots of unpacking of memories and stories and relationships. Very intense, and very convincing, perhaps the most sparsely written of her novels that I have yet read, but also very expressive. It was interesting to read this about the same time as I read Siri Hustvedt’s The Sorrows of an American, which attempts a similar set of themes on a broader canvas, but carries it off nothing like as well.
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Very well said sir. I always loved this, from the same play:
Now it’s high watermark
And floodtide in the heart
And time to go…
What’s left to say?
Suspect too much sweet talk
But never close your mind.
It was a fortunate wind
That blew me here. I leave
Half-ready to believe
That a crippled trust might walk
And the half-true rhyme is love.
An enormous loss.