new writing: tove jansson's sun city

(at wapo)

Rob Bixby via Wikimedia Commons

NYRB Classics recently re-issued Tove Jansson’s novel Sun City. I reviewed it for the Washington Post, but if you want the takeaway… it’s a good novel but it’s not her best:

But the novel also suffers in comparison to Jansson’s other books. Her focus on a panorama of the elderly is quite different from her other fiction, which often involves a smaller cast of characters — sometimes only two people — who are often physically isolated from the wider world. Ultimately, the book suffers under the weight of this ambition. The relationship between two or three people on an island exists within strict conditions: No matter how volatile, intimate or cruel, the players are fixed. When you can simply walk away from one tedious companion to find another you like better, it’s not the same, even if you’re still stuck in the same boardinghouse together.

In short, if you haven’t ever read Jansson’s fiction, start elsewhere. (But if you have read most of her translated fi…