Backlisted - Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

This week John and Andy are joined by award-winning children's author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce and publisher and co-founder of Sort Of Books Natania Jansz to discuss Tove Jansson's final Moomin book, Moominvalley in November. Other books under discussion are Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon and Time Regained, the final volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Plus a visit to Somerset House in London, for a new exhibition of the work of Peanuts creator, cartoonist Charles M. Schulz.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)9'40 - In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust12'34 - Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston17'20 - Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. well i was really lucky i was invited to go to the private view last week of the new exhibition at Somerset House in London, which is called Good Grief, Charlie Brown!

And that is devoted, as its title suggests, to the work of Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schultz, who for every day for 50 years created a peanut strip and I in my previous role as an editor-cum-publisher edited several volumes of peanut strips in addition to being a huge fan of them and Schultz had a hot streak from approximately 1962 to 1985 you could open any of the volumes from any year on any given day and he seemed to be incapable of phoning it in and having read the big biography of shorts that was published a few years ago the price that he paid for that was terrible depression and anxiety and fear of the blank page every morning

he went into his studio to write. But, you know, it's interesting to me that we're going to be talking about the Moomins today. There are definite parallels between Schultz and Janssen that we might talk about a bit later on. But certainly Peanuts, the thing I loved about Peanuts as a child was the same thing I loved about the Moomins,

was Peanuts and the Moomins seemed to me two of the only things that were nominally for children which were prepared to acknowledge that childhood could be melancholy okay and that other children could be rather unpleasant those seem to me to be the two key truths which which were not often named in children's literature of that era so although at the Somerset House exhibition they've done a brilliant thing where they've asked contemporary artists and musicians and designers like Fiona Bannerer, Mira Callix, Andy Holden, Marcus Coates to reinterpret Peanuts in new ways and produce new bits of work the heart of the exhibition is not just memorabilia that they've been collecting, that we would all remember from our childhoods,

t-shirts and pennants and records and the coronet books of strips, but 80 strips from the museum, from the Schultz Museum, some in an unfinished state, including a strip with four blank frames in it, for you to look at it and think, now you have a go and see how difficult it is. And they've also set up a psychiatrist booth, you know, like Lucy's psychiatrist booth.

There's a real psychiatrist who will offer advice for five cents the doctor is in it's absolutely brilliant exhibition i cannot recommend it highly enough it's on till march it seems to me one of those fantastic bit like the the yanson exhibition at the dulwich picture gallery managing to make the strips the centre of the exhibition, but also bring in so much extra stuff to help you understand where the artist was coming from. I have to tell you that Torvald Janssen wrote a short story about a cartoonist called The Cartoonist, where a cartoonist goes mad and another cartoonist fills his shoes and realises that he's going mad too.

It's in Art and Nature, a copy of which I bought today and haven't read. It's one of the only ones I haven't read. So thank you. You've primed me already. Isn't that a little bit what happened with her brother? He kind of filled her shoes when the pressures of doing the movie strip were bearing down I think she realised that if she didn't sort of shrug off some of that burden it would drive her mad

but I love the way she describes precisely how it might happen So before John sets us off on course into the episode itself you've heard some special theme music this week and that was the opening music to the 1982

Polish animated version of the Moomins by Graham Miller and Steve Schill which is now seen as a piece of pioneering electronica in its own right. And it was reissued this year by Finders,

last year, sorry, by Finders Keepers Records. It's like something that sounds like it's come out on Warp in about 1999, but it was made by two guys in their bedroom in 1982 after Anne Wood went to them and said, oh, we've bought this Polish version of the Moomins. Can you do some music for it? Great intel. I love it.

So we'll hear a bit more of that at the end. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us in a wooden house in a coastal valley as the year draws to its close, sea frets rolling in from the ocean, trees dripping with fine autumnal rain, curtains drawn against the gathering cold. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, I'm the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously and before we introduce our guests today I'd just like to let listeners know if you're in London on Thursday December

the 6th we are recording a live episode of Backlisted at the LRB bookshop in Bloomsbury we will be talking about Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Pohl brackets and the rest of a dance to the music of time like you do at a live podcast there's only 12 novels and it's our Christmas episode and we're being joined by

Anthony Pohl's biographer Hilary Sperling and the novelist Philip Hencher for this special live episode which will go out on Christmas Day. Tickets are available from the LRB shop website or the shop itself and just as a heads up when you hear this

on Monday it's almost sold out so if you're thinking of coming get in there quick. Anyway, that's enough of our live promotion. Let's talk to our guests. Joining us today are Natalia Jantz, co-publisher of Sort Of Books, one of our favourite independent imprints, celebrated for publishing, Chris Stewart, author of the best-selling travel series that began with Driving Over Lemons. But more recently, and we all owe her a huge debt of thanks, which I'm saying right at the top of this programme, thank you, more recently closely associated with the English republication or publication of Torve Jansson's oeuvre. Now, Torve, will you give us, was that

okay? Can you give us the definitive pronunciation of our author's name? I can't give the definitive, but having hung out with Sophia Jansson, Torve's niece, she's always said Torvay. But there's a sort of timbre to the sound that I don't think any of us will ever get. But I think Torvay will do it. I once said on a very early episode of this podcast that it was pronounced Toovay to rhyme with Duvay. I wish to apologise to all present. And we're also joined by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Hello, Frank. Hi.

She'll always be tove to me. Frank is an award-winning writer and screenwriter whose film credits include Welcome to Sarajevo, Hilary and Jackie, and 24 Hour People, which means he's worked with Mark E. Smith. Yes. And therefore you can be considered a member of The Fall. Indeed.

I probably have been he was on set wasn't he he's in a queue yeah he threw a punch at me actually at some point did he throw a punch at you yeah everyone's got a story

yeah and also earlier you wrote episodes of Brookside I did yeah you don't look old enough to remember that

but anyway that's very kind of you that's very kind of you to say not true and Doctor Who of course you've written a couple of episodes

of Doctor Who and Millions Frank's debut children's novel won the 2004 Carnegie Medal and was shortlisted for the Guardian

Children's Fiction Award recent books include The Unforgotten Coat The Astounding Broccoli Boy and Spooknit's Guide to Life on Earth which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal

Swag merely shortlisted for the Carnegie Mellon. Swice. Merely shortlisted. They'll regret that. It's also fair to say, Frank, you did a lot of the heavy lifting in the Olympic opening ceremony, didn't you? Yeah, well, I was part of the team.

It feels now like a sort of high watermark in our kind of sense of national identity, but it's all been a bit downhill since then. It feels like a kind of, you know, sense of national identity. But it's all been a bit downhill since then. It feels like a kind of delusion, which is kind of what the subject of this book is. Hemulin Nation. Oh, Hemulin Nation. Well done.

That's brilliant. Commission that, John, fast. Well, we're here to talk about, with huge joy and no small bit of melancholy, Moominvalley in November, the eighth and final book in the Moomin series of novels by Torve Janssen, first published in 1970. But before we stumble, Hemulen-like, into that magical land,

Andy, what have you been reading this week? I'm going to try and do this. I'm going to try and do this in three minutes. I'm going to try and summarise Proust going to i'm going to try and do this in three minutes right i'm going to try and summarize proust for all listeners of a certain age uh i'm going to try and finish proust this week so this year that my year of my 50th birthday i at the third attempt have finished reading in search of lost time by marcel proust it's pretty good isn't it let's be honest that's pretty good is there a twist at the end no spoilers pretty good no spoilers he did it is the answer the twist is he did it um i got to the i got to the end all i want to say about it is uh you know i am known for

encouraging people to read long and challenging books this took me three goes at various points in my life to read and um i read it this year basically by by dividing it up into 10 or so o bwyntiau yn fy nghyd-drych i'w ddarllen ac rydw i wedi'i ddarllen y flwyddyn hon yn y bôn gan ei rannu i 10 neu so o ddarnau a darllen 400 neu 500 o ffeindiau bob mis. Ac roedd hynny'n ddefnyddiol iawn, fel pan oeddwn i'n siarad am Dŵr i'r Cymru y flwyddyn diwethaf, roedd yn ddefnyddiol iawn i mi ffwrddio allan ohono a dod yn ôl i'r cwmpas. Felly na fyddwch chi'n cael eich helpful to wander off from it and come back to it so that you don't get locked into sort of rage at times with Proust for making you read 300 pages about one awful dinner party, which seems like it will never end.

But all I really want to say about it is I read Time Regained last week, which is the final volume, and I'm not even going to deprecate this, without question, one of the greatest reading experiences of my life is reading that final volume. And I would say to anyone who is thinking of undertaking this great task of reading this masterpiece,

it's a masterpiece, and you discover why it's a masterpiece in the final volume so you you will be you will enjoy it you will enjoy the ride you will find things that will frustrate you you will find bits you don't understand all i can say is the final volume there is a sustained passage of about 100 to 150 pages in the middle of time regained which is one of the most exhilarating things I have ever read. Even as I talk about it, I can feel the hairs on my arm standing up. What I loved about it so much is I'm not saying it from an intellectual point of view. It was very much a brilliant coming together of head and heart and a sort of, finish those 3 000 pages and you just want to go back to the

beginning this book that's driven you mad and drove him mad and he couldn't finish it before he died those last four or five hundred pages are just magical that's what his reading is all about so was that three minutes it's probably a bit over wasn't it pretty good john better than the monty python yeah john what have you been reading this i've been reading this week a remarkable book by zora neil hurston recently reissued by hq an imprint of harper collins called Barracoon, The Story of the Last Slave. And it is essentially Zora Neale Hurston, probably known, if known at all to anyone today, for her great classic book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was, as well as being a novelist, was a pretty good anthropologist.

And this book is based on a series of conversations she had in December 1927 with the last surviving person who had endured the Middle Passage from being a free person in Africa to becoming a slave in Alabama. He was known as Cujo Lewis. He was 86 when the interviews took place. It's interesting on all kinds of levels. The story itself is heartbreaking delivered in the kind of patois that he spoke in. And one of the many controversial things about this book is that that was slightly frowned upon at the time. But she was determined for it to be authentic. I actually think now, with the benefit of hindsight, it's a brilliant piece of writing. His story, the vividness of his memories of Afriki, where he wanted to live and

wanted to spend his whole life wanting to get back to and was never able to, are incredibly vivid. The rituals, the thing about the book that was controversial at the time is it's very clear that they were sold into slavery by other black tribes. So at the time it became controversial because it seemed to be a book that was not helpful to the civil rights movement because of the internecine struggles between African black tribes. The middle passage is as ghastly as you can can imagine but he was not a slave for terribly long this was 50 years he was he was captured in 1860 sold into slavery this was 50 years after it had been abolished in america so he was freed after five years and much of the book is about his life after he's uh he's been freed and his attempts to with other africans to make a town, which they did near Mobile in Alabama, called Africa Town. And they managed to get enough money to buy a small plot of land.

They built a church. It's an incredible story. All his children, bar one, die before him. In fact, I think they all die before him and his wife. It's heart-rending. It's beautiful. He has all the dignity you would expect of somebody who's been through these experiences.

I'll just read you the very last bit. I'm not going to attempt to do the accent. But it's just to say that I think that it's remarkable because this story is always told through intermediaries. It's incredibly rare to have this. I mean, amazing of Zora Neale Hurston to have the foresight to do this. And it is a work of literature.

His stories are incredible. So it just ends like this. I had spent two months with Kusula, who is called Kujo, trying to find the answers to my questions. Some days we ate great quantities of clingstone peaches and talked. Sometimes we ate watermelon and talked.

Once it was a huge mess of steamed talked. Sometimes we ate watermelon and talked. Once it was a huge mess of steamed crabs. Sometimes we just ate. Sometimes we just talked. At other times neither was possible. He just chased me away. He wanted to work in his garden or fix his fences. He couldn't be bothered. The present was too urgent to let the past intrude. But on the whole he was glad to see me and we became warm friends. At the end, the bond had become strong enough for him to wish to follow me to New York. It was a very sad morning in October when I said the final goodbye, and looked back the last time at the lonely figure that stood on the edge of the cliff that fronts the highway. When I crossed the bridge, I know he went back to

his porch, to his house full of thoughts, to his memories of fat girls with ringing gold bracelets, his drums that speak the minds of men, to palm nut cakes and bull roarers, to his parables. I'm sure he does not fear death. In spite of his long Christian fellowship, he is too deeply pagan to fear death, but he is full of trembling awe before the altar of the past. It's amazing. It will live with me forever. I mean, it's an amazing counterpoint to all the great... Toni Morrison, to Colson Whitehead,

all the great slave novels that have been written, just to have that authentic voice. And great to HarperCollins for reissuing it. I read Their Eyes Were Watching God earlier this year, which I'd never read before. And that, I thought, was absolutely tremendous. Again, this is a theme we return to.

Sometimes very famous books are famous because they're very good. Who knew? Now it's commercials. Anyway. Anyway, the main event now. Moominvalley in November. Moominvalley in November, like you were saying, was the eighth novel, but ninth book.

I'm looking inquiringly at you. In a way, it's the ninth book and the eighth novel because Tales from Moominvalley are short stories. And the very first, Moomins and the Great Flood, it's a sort of pilot prequel in a way. Yes, pilot is good, yes. It's slightly to one side. She really gets going with the series with Comet and then Finn Family Moomintroll,

which was the first to be published in the UK because they thought people would get it more quickly if they started with Finn Family Moomin Troll. One of the things I found totally revelatory about Sortov's republication of Torve Jansson's work and your publication of Bo Weston's biography is just, you know, I'm sure all of us, or most of us around the table, remember the Moomin books from our childhoods.

They were very present in the culture. They were amongst my favourite, if not my favourite books when I was a child. But I think I didn't really understand that they had been written over a 25-year period, beginning in the Second World War, effectively, and then ending with this one in 1971. I think I sort of took them as an eight-book homogenous set. They were just around in the 1970s. So one of the things that Sotov has done, which is so brilliant, I think, is educate people to understand where Janssen was coming from.

I hope so. where Janssen was coming from. I hope so. Frank, can you remember the first time you came across Moominvalley in November? Absolutely. I was in just the local library and I took down Finn Family Moomin Troll and started to read it and absolutely adored it.

Didn't know she was Tove Janssen. I had no idea whether she was was male female or she could have been a Moomin for all I knew I didn't know I thought she I didn't know Finland was a real place they assumed she'd made it up like Narnia I knew nothing about it and and just fell into it and just loved it and then the next I'm pretty sure the next one I read was Moominvalley in November which I thought would be the same. I can't tell you how clearly Finn Family Moomin Troll spoke to me because it was about things that a lot of children's books are not about.

Like, it's about a happy family. Like, loads of children's books are about how miserable families are and how awful parents are. Like, that whole Roald Dahl thing of, like, nobody understands you, dear reader, except me because adults are all crap except for me he didn't have any of that you know and it was like this is a happy family and who were going on an adventure but they'd always be back by tea time and it had this amazing mixture of adventure and safety and it was just I just loved it so much and I really felt it had been written for me and that's the thing about the power of

great literature but great children's literature that here is this tiny, lesbian, upper middle class, bohemian Finn on an island in the Gulf of Finland and I honestly thought she was writing for me on a big housing estate just outside Liverpool. So it just shot through all those demographics and then it bloody picked up moving by November

and it was like, you've completely betrayed me. What has gone on here? It was like you'd invited Kierkegaard around on a play date. It's like, what is going on? A fantasy film with an Ingmar Bergman film, right? You know, I've been rereading them all for this podcast. And it is still, I know it starts, she starts to turn

a little bit, Torvay, in Moominland Midwinter but nothing prepares you quite for the sense of you know that some things are going to be wrong before you even get to the house and then they get to the house and it's kind of Well hang on, I want Frank to say

Frank, when you read Moominvalley what was the key element you were surprised at? Well, that the Moomins aren't in it. There you go. What a lie. I found myself so disbelieving of that fact that I went back to, I was going to see, do they come back in the end? And of course they kind of do. How courageous is that?

Oh, just amazing. You know, like, I mean, even then, I knew that something extraordinary was going on. And I've got a confession to make. I don't think I reread that till now, but it's really stayed with me. And a little bit afraid of that book. You know, it made me scared in quite a profound way. I did have an experience when we were at the exhibition, that there was an exhibition in Helsinki.

And I suggested that maybe at the end of the book, and it's a bit of a spoiler alert, but I said, maybe they don't come back in your face. It was as if I stabbed you. I've changed my mind about that, of course. Yeah, it was devastating. Why, Nat, did you choose this of all the eight? I chose it because, well, I think it does something extraordinary.

And it's one of those books, I think it's brilliant for this, because it's one of the least known Moomins. And yet I think it encapsulates so much of what Torve was trying to do in her writing. I mean, something did happen in the Moomins' stories. They begin in this very bright, cheery, wonderfully safe environment and it's summer and it's adventurous and there's all sorts of things that happen, great qualities. But Torve describes later, and I think it's because I'm immersed in reading her letters at the moment, but she describes those Moomin books as being a wishful dream and that's what speaks to you this wishful dream it's all right Frank it's all right it's and and and when she wrote those Moomin books I think she

was writing about real things this wasn't delusion but it was how she wanted life to be and she started those books started thinking them up in wartime and in the appalling austerity after wartime and what you needed to get by was that wishful dream and what amazed me is the way Torvey was an idealist she really um you know she understood the world she wasn't confused about it in any way but she she had principles that she tried to follow and when you you see, when you read, which nobody can yet because we haven't published the letters yet, that's coming next year. When you read about her principles about the bohemian lifestyle, not being possessive, about relationships,

and you see how she gets let down time and time again. And her principles about art, giving her best. She never shortchanges on her art art whatever she's doing i i find really fascinating the idea that one of the things that's totally changed about how i feel about her work is because we were so because there were those eight novels and you saw you didn't really know about any of the other books you assumed that the novels were a sequence which were crafted as novels, a series of novels, which they were. What I understand much more clearly is that Tove Jansson was an artist who kept moving. Yes.

Who expressed herself via different media throughout her life. And in a sense, the Moomin novels are more easily understood as fictional bulletins from how she felt about art and her success, as much as her painting was when she started writing them, and then her writing for adults became as she went on. I mean, the book that precedes Moominvalley in November, that is an amazing book. That was one of my favourite books as a child, if not my favourite. And when I went back to it, it's the story of a man's midlife crisis. Which he visits on his family. Yes, which he visits on his family, yes. It's interesting. I loved it too.

But I loved Moominland Midwinter. I don't know, reading that now, that's a nightmare. It is, but it's also enchanting. It is. And it's full of poetry. The plot of Moominland Midwinter is that the Moomins hibernate in the winter and one of them wakes up. It's terrifying.

The young Moomin wakes up and his family are asleep. He wakes up and it's the upside down. And the world belongs to other people because the world belongs to Moominland. And it's not your world. The mess they make. He's worried about his mother waking up. And the sun belongs to other people because the world belongs to we. And it's not your world. The mess they make of, you know, and he's worried about his mother waking up. And the sun is gone.

Yeah. And I just thought that was the most thrilling. And again, I thought she'd invented that. You know, I now know that Finland, you know, the sun doesn't come up in the winter and they've got to deal with all that. It just seemed like huge philosophical ideas going on in that. I mean, what an image of alienation

is that everyone else is asleep and you're awake. That was a huge step for Torvay to do that book because it was just after she'd met Tootie, who became her life companion. That was the big love of her life that lasted her until the end of her life from her early 40s. And it was Tootie who continually nudged her to sort of put truth in the books.

I mean, there always was truth in the books, but to sort of give it unadorned, that children can take it. And this idea that children can cope with the complex and the profound. They can't articulate it for themselves, but boy, can they recognise it. But she never dismantles that world to do that.

It's both those things. We're talking, and you talked about, this is the only children's writer who really embraces melancholy. Yeah, but she's also brilliant at describing happiness. And actually, I have to say, the reason I'm here is that a lot of the happiness in my life I've got because I read the Turvey-Yanson books, and she made me

recognize the good things in the world and to treasure them and I think that's one of the powerful things that children's literature can do to you it's like points out these little little small pleasures that that will get you through and and says look here's this thing and it kind of roots it in your heart with her it's like seasonality you know how precious and fragile and passing and the summer is now you must throw yourself into it i just like moping about yeah moping about coffee quietness yeah you know and especially mums you know mothers i'm into motherhood you know but so frank i'm gonna ask you to read a little bit for us in a minute but i just want to set this up

i'm going to put you in a lineage you're not aware you're in which is that I did some poking around on the BBC Genome website to see if Moominvalley in November, like the other Moomin books, had been read on Jackanory. Oh please.

And it never was read on Jackanory, right? But I will tell you which ones were And who read them And then you will join The lineage of Jackanory readers On this special episode Right

Finn Family Moomin Troll was read in 1966 On Jackanory by the actress Mai Zetterling Moominland Midwinter was read in 1970 by Alan Bennett. Oh, wow. Tales from Moominvalley was read in February 1972 by likely lad James Bolam. Wow.

That's good. That's good. Moomin Summer Madness was read in 1973 by Judi Dench. Of course it was. This is about a theatre. And Comet in Moominland in 1974 was read by Keith Barron. So they did five of them. And they never did Moominpappa at Sea.

And they never did Moominvalley in November. Who should have read those? Who would we have chosen? Moominpappa at Sea. Moominpappa at Sea. I'm very depressed. It's like Michael Douglas from Falling Down. In the top hat.

I'm the bad guy! So Frank, please would you make history by reading for us from Moominvalley in November? This is probably quite an eccentric choice. One of the things that's great about the Moomin books that's like other great

children's classics is that it has this anatomy of personalities through these characters so i think women of a certain age who loved little women know whether they're joe or beth or meg or whatever and two of it offers you these the hemulin who's this sort of bossy sort of organizing soul and philly jonks who are kind of neurotic and snuffkin who's this free spirit and little my who's this fierce little creature and in all the other books the filly jonks are really kind of neurotic and there's a particularly neurotic filly jonkin here who suddenly has this sort of panic attack while she's cleaning her house and says i can't clean anymore and goes to stay with the moomins but who aren't there of course and while she's in the house which

is sort of the plot of this book, is that people come here and kind of rediscover themselves. She rediscovers the joy of cleaning a house, which is exactly what I was saying about small pleasures. And that's having nearly died from cleaning. Having nearly died from cleaning the house. She falls down the roof. She's suddenly...

Saved by a duster. Saved by a duster, jammed in a window. Yeah. Philly Junk was cleaning. Every single pan was on the stove, heating water. Brushes and rags and bowls were dancing out of their cupboards, and the veranda railings were decorated with carpet. It was an enormous clean-up, the most enormous that anyone had ever seen.

The others stood on the slope outside in amazement, watching Philly Junk go in and out, backwards and forwards, with a scarf around her head and Mum and Mama's apron on, which was so big it went round her three times. Snufkin went into the kitchen looking for his mouth organ. On the shelf above the stove, said Filijonk as she went past. I've been very careful with it.

You can keep it a little bit longer if you want, said Snufkin uncertainly. Filijonk answered in her matter-of-fact way. Take it or get one of my own. Watch out, he's treading on the sweepings. It was wonderful to be cleaning again. She knew exactly where the dust had hidden itself. Soft and grey and self-satisfied, it had made itself comfortable in the corners.

She searched out every single bit of fluff which had rolled itself into a big fat ball and thought it was safe. Ha! Moth larvae, spiders, centipedes, all kinds of creepy crawlies were routed out by Filillyjong's big broom and lovely streams of hot water and soapy lava washed everything away. It was by no means an inconsiderable amount of mess that went out of the door, bucketful after bucketful. It was fun to be alive. I've never liked it when women folk clean up, said Grandpa Grumble. But the clothes cupboard was cleared. It had twice as big a clearing as everything else. The only thing that the filly junk didn't

touch was the mirror inside. After a while, the fun of cleaning became contagious and everybody except Grandpa Grumble joined in. They carried water, shook carpets, scrubbed a bit of floor here and there. They each had a window to clean and when they felt hungry, they went into the pantry and looked for what was left over from the party. Fiddyjunk didn't eat anything. She didn't talk. How on earth would she have time or inclination for things like that? She whistled a little. She was light on her feet, and she moved like the wind. One moment here, another there. She made up for all her desolation and fright and thought casually.

Whatever took possession of me? I have been nothing better than a great big ball of fluff. And why? And she couldn't remember why. And so the wonderful day of cleaning came to a close and thank goodness with no rain. When dusk came, everything was straight again. Everything was clean and polished and the house stirred in surprise in all directions through its clean windows. Fiddyjunk took off her scarf and hung Mimmy Mama's apron on the peg.

That's it, she said, and now I'm going home. They sat on the veranda steps together. It was very cold in the evenings now, but a feeling of approaching change and departure kept them sitting there. Thanks for cleaning the house, said the Hemulen. Frank Codra Boys will be here again at the same time tomorrow for Jackanory. But like what an unexpected ecstasy, cleaning up. And she can treasure that. The great thing about this book is that sense of

they've all gone there, all the characters who've gone there to find the Moomins, to some version of home, some version of domestic comfort. And of course they get there and the Moomins aren't there so they have to make it up themselves. But you get the sense with the philly that philly junk character that domesticity is also a curse you know she she struggles with it yeah she she gives up cleaning because it nearly killed her and then she starts again and it's it's there's no there are no easy wins in the in the book yeah one of the things that there's just a lovely bit about earlier in the book where she's having still

going mad she's obsessed with things coming out of the cupboard. And she says, you've no idea, whispered the filly, John Contenci. You've no idea what's broken loose in this valley. Horrid things have been let out of the clothes cupboard upstairs, and they're everywhere. And then Mimble, who's a fantastic character, Little My Sister. Mimble sat up and asked, is that why you've got flypaper around your boots? She yawned and rubbed her nose. She turned round in the doorway and said,

don't fuss, there's nothing here that's worse than we are ourselves. There's this wonderful thing throughout the Moomin books that there aren't rules to domesticity. There's an anarchy about it. So if your house gets flooded, you can cut a hole in the ceiling swim down to your stove and collect your coffee and one of the great images for me

is when Mama drops some clippings into the hobgoblin's hat and when she wakes up the whole room is overgrown with vines and lianas I love that Nat, can you remember when you first,

as someone for whom Torfey Janssen's work has been so significant in the last 10 to 15 years for sorts of books, can you remember when you first encountered her writing? Well, I have the sort of, I've got the zealotry of the convert because I had this very deprived childhood and I didn't have I didn't read Torfey Jansson as a child I was sent a Moomin mug by a friend in Sweden and that sort of oriented me to the character and my partner Mark and co-publisher Mark Ellingham was in Seattle

and found this amazing colour picture book which was the book about Moomin, Mimble and Little My and bought it back and Little My, and bought it back. And we'd just started sort of, and we thought we must publish this because the pictures were so extraordinary. But there was a problem. There was this sort of excreble English translation of the verse,

where, you know, this idea that verse is only the rhyme at the end, and you don't have to worry about anything before that. So we set about trying to get a new English translation of the verse and got permission to publish that book. And while we were doing that, we were sent a copy of the summer book, and that was one of the highlights. The Torve Janssens, the summer Book, where this copy arrived, we read it,

we felt that sort of flash of acquisitiveness. I mean, the thing is about The Summer Book, first of all, The Summer Book is a masterpiece. It is. And the second thing about The Summer Book is it had been published here in the 1970s and hadn't really done anything. And I make this point because I think listeners,

we sort of take that book for granted now as a bit of a classic because you've done such a fantastic job on bringing it to people and putting it in front of people. And there's going to be a film of the summer book coming with Judy Walters in it. And it's such a wonderful book. And you published it so well. The tone with which you published it, and you got it so well part of the tone with which you published it and you

got it out to people and you made a bestseller of this book that hadn't been found it's wonderful there's a sort of sleeping audience for it of of Moominvalley that were kind of intrigued I don't remember reading Moominvalley in November as a child and I don't know why that is because I but I think I'd have probably had a similar response to Frank, that feeling of being lost. My memory of reading this one as a child, because I read them all

many times and the thing I remember about how I felt about Movement Valley in November was I had a clear sense of having never read a book like it yes yes that's why and I could understand it most via its mood because if we try to sit here and summarize the plot I thought this when I read it last week again it's actually very difficult to summarize

the plot it's it's based around the emotional development of a group of disparate characters yeah and there's an absence at the heart of it, the gaps that they're all trying to fill in various ways. This one short paragraph, I have a clear memory of reading this paragraph in the cafe of Debenhams, looking out over the seafront in Hastings on a visit to my grandparents when I was about

nine or ten and this does give you an indication of what a melancholy child I was. I remember sitting there with like a glass of orange squash reading this at the beginning of chapter five. The Hemulin woke up slowly and recognised himself and wished he had been someone he didn't know. He felt even tireder than when he went to bed and here it was, another day which would go on until evening and then there would be another one and another one which would be the same as all days are when they are lived by a Hemulin. I mean, that's my favourite, as everybody

who listens to this knows, my favourite Winnie the Pooh character is Eeyore. I mean that's wonderfully Eeyore-ish. Eeyore looked like an air hostess, didn't it? It does! It does indeed! It's like the one in the winter book who's

just an arse, who wants everybody to go outside and get fresh air all the time and ski and everybody's saying no we don't want to do it just leave us alone The filly junk in Moomin Valley she becomes heroic there's something wonderful about this neurotic

strange creature becoming heroic and the hemuline becomes heroic in midwinter I think that's one of the greatest short stories of all time because it's there's a dog called Sorio

who's convinced he's a wolf and eventually goes out of the hemulion and meets some wolves and thinks oh my god I'm a dog and it's the hemulion's

kind of utter bumptious ignorance of the danger of wolves just saves him because he just goes, oh, some wolves, let's go skiing, and it's done, you know. And so as the publisher of her books,

I mean, you've both reissued things that had been translated into English, but you've also commissioned new translations, haven't you, of works that hadn't been published in English? Most of her adult books hadn't been translated into English. The summer book had. Yeah, that was about it. And most of those books were written after she had finished writing the Moomin books.

They mostly come from the 1970s and 80s. The Sculptor's Daughter comes just before she does Moominvalley in November. Halfway through the series, she starts to sort of shift in tone. And there's this desire to write. Well, she wants to write for adults, but she wants to also continue her Moomin series. And she's under huge pressure to do that. She deals with this by wanting to write for children at a more profound level. So deepens the work you absolutely feel that and then she sort of falls out with her Swedish publisher because she wants to write these adult books and she wants the last two Moomin books to be able to appeal to all ages you know for people to

understand it at different levels and and that she really achieves You really do get stuff as an adult, you know, not over the head of children, but you just understand the profundity in a very conscious way. A child might recognise something and feel comforted to have something stated, but not be so conscious of it. the adult work had to change publisher to do that and it didn't get the publicity and the there wasn't the same sort of reception for her adult work as it was for her moments because there you know there were a whole load of movement fans who would meet up and they would have book groups and read the latest movement to each other and they didn't all of them follow her into her adult work which was a real misunderstanding of some of the art of romance, I think. I remember reading a few years ago The True Deceiver, which is a novel that she wrote in the early 80s. Which is incredible.

First of all, it's a wonderful book, but it's remarkably ruthless in not letting either characters or reader off the hook. That's one of the things I think becomes the steeliness that works its way into her adult writing. Frank, one of the things that strikes me about her writing in the Moomin books is she's so brilliant at delineating character. We've been talking about these characters,

Snufkin, Toft, Fiddyjunk, Hemulink, Grandpa Grumble, Mimble. character yeah we've been talking about these characters snuffkin toft filly junk hemuling grandpa grumble mimble they're so well drawn so quickly yeah and and you never read the books and think well these are just a collection of little creatures they're sort of interchangeable how does she do it well they all stand for something don't they that's one thing they all kind of stand for a view of life and one one of the wonderful things that happens as it you know so there's there's stuff going who's freedom and there's little my who's like i don't give a toss and there's moving papa who's quite stuffy and there's moving mama who's very generous and they all seem to stand for something but as the series goes on she kind of explores the contradictions of that and like when you when you're little and you read fin family moving troll you're completely like i want to be Snufkin and go away and all that.

But then by the time you get to here, you think, well, why does Snufkin keep coming back? Why does he need to keep coming back? And if the Moomin house is so ridiculous with its anti-Maccasas and its fretwork and its rules and its hibernation and all that, why does he need to be there? And he's sort of like, I think, you know, a great work of art, and I really think this is a very, very great work of art, I think, you know, a great work of art. And I really think this is a very, very great work of art, this book.

A really, truly great work of art. Great works of art contain contradictions, don't they? They're both really... When you read this, the first time you start thinking, there's a dark side to Snufkin. There's a kind of narcissism and an ungenerousness where there's an openness in that house, you know, which he feeds off.

To be creative. To be creative because he finds his song in Moominvalley and he knows he's going to find his song in Moominvalley. Snufkin plays a mouth organ and is a composer. He's Bob Dylan. He's a user and he's travelling on. That's true. But Jarvis Cocker did say that Snufkin's,

there's a story of Snufkin in Tales from Ymir Valley. There's a story called The Spring Tune where Snufkin is looking for notes and knows he has to wait patiently for these notes to arrive. They're almost there. And a character called A Creep in English, I don't know what it was in Swedish, but pops up and is obviously a sort of, you know,

an interrupting fan, pops up and spo sort of, you know, an interrupting fan, pops up and spoils his, disrupts his mindset and the notes go away and he knows they'll have to wait for them to come again. And in this book, he realises he wants to find these notes and he's going to find them in Moominvalley. Yeah, there are five bars, must be somewhere in Moominvalley and he wouldn't find them until he went back again. There are millions of. Must be somewhere in Moominvalley. And he wouldn't find them until he went back again. There are millions of tunes that are easy to find and there always will be new ones.

But Snufkin let them alone. They were summer songs which would do for just anybody. He crept into his tent and into his sleeping bag and pulled it over his head. The faint whisper of rain and running water was still there. It had the same tender note of solitude and perfection. But what did the rain mean to him as long as he couldn't write a song about it yeah yeah no it's all of a yanson was also a songwriter of course one of the ways when she expressed herself and we

have this is a very rare is this the autumn song yes this is the autumn song in an english translation well now this is the lyrics in English by Monica Anderson, and this is performed by Kalibri Uka. We've got an extract now, and the whole thing is on YouTube, if you go and look for it. But we're just going to hear a little bit now. A storm is blowing harder And I had to shut the door

I'm still thinking of you in this eerie hour I may be loving less than I used to love before But you don't really know of my power Staring at the beacons along the windy coast Where ships and you, their white caps and their weather Now caring and sharing are things that matter most Can I just give you a bit of context about this? Because it's an amazing, it's actually an amazing song. Tori's writing about a sort of, in middle age, about this chance for love. She's, you know, it's not long since she's met Tutti.

It's this great chance for her to have this partner that she's always wanted. And she's writing about someone calling to a lover as winter is coming. We're back into autumn, winter is coming. And it's a chance for this, you know, another chance to get through the winter together, to have this bid for love. It's very moving, yeah.

Now, you haven't read any passages yet. Well, yes, I'm a bit sort of... Torn. i'm very torn because i think that that why why i think it's so wonderful to talk about moominvalley in november is i think it makes sense that just with your your reading of proust that it gets you get to the end and so much comes together and i think here we've got Torve telling us about her project which she's been contemplating over these 20 years and Toft in this story is a storyteller. He's telling himself, he's having his own wishful dream that helps him to sleep at night and it's all about this lovely valley.

In order to be able to properly greet the Moomins he has to go on a journey himself. He goes to Moomin House, but he also has to discover anger and realize that there are ups and downs in Moomin Valley, that the Moomins experience a range of emotions. And then when he's accepted that, the sort of natural rather than the idealized, he can greet the family coming back but but there's there's something about that we talked about how beautiful the writing is and just the descriptions you know her spinning a story her writing toft spinning his story and so it begins this is quite early on in the book, in chapter two. In the evening, when everyone had gone home and the bay was silent,

Toph would tell himself a story of his own. It was all about the happy family. He told it until he went to sleep, and the following evening he would go on from where he'd left off or start it all over again from the beginning. Toph generally began by describing the happy Moomin Valley. He went slowly down the slopes where the dark pines and the pale birch trees grew. It became warmer. He tried to describe to himself what it felt like when the valley opened out into a wild green garden lit by sunshine,

with green leaves waving in the summer breeze, the green grass all round him with patches of sunlight in it, and the sound of bees and everything smelling so nice and he walked on slowly until he heard the sound of the river. It was important not to change a single detail. Once he'd placed a summer house by the river but it had been a mistake. All that had to be there was the bridge and the letterbox. Then came the lilac bushes and Moom and Papa's woodshed both with their own smells of summer and safety. It goes on. I won't read the whole of that description.

But it was, as she's writing, she's writing about the act of deciding what's going to be in your scene. And it's very inspiring, I think, for children to realise this is how stories are told. This is how they're created. And Toft is like the centre of this book. We've not really talked about him. And he's not in any of the other Moomin books. There's some

shadowy prefigurings of him, but he's the one who needs the Moomins. He's the reader, he's the narrator, he's Tuva. Yes. And he's also struggling. It's so, it's so, God, this book is so good. He's struggling with this scientific... Oh, we love this.

It's the history of evolution about this creature that grows. The numulite. Oh, yeah. Forget how to pronounce Torvey. How do you pronounce the numulite? The noctil. Can I, like, because we keep talking about this. It's very profound and serious.

It's a really funny book. Yeah. And there's a fantastic... It's really funny. And there's a sequence where the sort of big, bumptious hemulant tries to make everybody have a good time and have a party and he says this party up that's just not working because the movements are not there and toft is so absorbed in this book of the nominates so he tries to make everyone do a party turn and he goes cheers to the hemulant here's to good companionship. And they all drank. And the glasses were the smallest and the best ones,

the ones with decorated rims. And then they sat down. And now, said the Hemulin, the program will continue with the least significance. It's only fair that the last shall be first. Eh, toft? Toft. This is his party piece.

Open the book and read. Page 227. It is exceptional that a form of life of this species we have attempted to reconstruct has retained its grimivorous nature in a purely physiological sense simultaneously with a continuing aggressivity of attitude towards its environment.

I've got to say, there's a bit where the hemuline is explaining to Toft how you go about doing DIY one bangs in the nails and the other pulls out the old rusty ones and everything is one does the great interesting and the other does Toft says you pretty much figures out I'm the other

in there I'd like to read a bit from chapter 15 we need to give some credit to Kingsley Hart for his translation I'd like to read a bit from chapter 15. We need to give some credit to Kingsley Hart for his translation. It's really good, right? This is just a short scene where Toft and the filly junk, the filly junk in one of her anxieties feels that Toft needs mothering.

Yes. Toft doesn't agree. I just want to read this because when I read this last week, I thought this is writing of the absolute top rank. This isn't great children's writing or whatever. Because you also know that Toft sort of does want mothering as well. Listen to this. One evening, Philly Junk tapped on the box room door, opened it cautiously and said,

Hello there. Toft looked up from his book and waited. The big Philly Junk sat down on the floor beside him, put her head on one side and said, what are you reading? A book, Toft answered. Philly Junk took a deep breath and took the plunge. It isn't always easy to be small and not have a mummy, is it? Toft hid himself in his chair. He felt ashamed of her and didn't answer. He's brutal, right? Fillyjunk reached out her paw and then drew it back.

She said very sincerely, Yesterday evening I suddenly thought of you. What is your name again? Toft, said Toft. Toft, Philly Junk repeated. A lovely name. She desperately searched for words and wished she knew a little more about children and liked them. In the end, she said, are you warm enough? Are you all right here? Yes, thank you, said Toft. Filijonk tried to look straight into his eyes and asked imploringly, are you really sure? Toft drew back a bit. She smelt of fear. Hastily, he said, a blanket perhaps? Filijonk got up immediately. And you shall have one, she exclaimed.

Just wait, it won't take a minute. He heard her running down the stairs and coming back again. She had a blanket with her. Thank you very much, Toft said and bowed. It's a very good blanket. I mean, you know, that's so wonderful on both sides. He holds it up and puts it on a shelf, doesn't he? You are right, but it's the disappointment because nothing will do but Moominmama.

You know, he wants Moominmama. And in that early bit where he's making the story up of going to Moominvalley, he always gets to the point where he can just see Moominmama's nose coming around the door. It's almost eroticised, his longing for her in that kind of way and it's like a sort of you know it's really cool that's what i love about this book yeah yeah there have been people saying well the at the very end he goes to so that he can catch the rope when the

boat comes and of course that must be the unbelikeable cord that he wants to call that stuff okay so now nikki nikki you have you ever read a moomin book no i've tried i can't get into them has this had any effect on you sitting here i'm amazed amazed that you, this sort of, I suppose, theorising behind it. Yeah, I never understood them to be that. Well, as Frank says, they are complex, but they're also... Didn't the original Moomin... Beautifully done.

It wasn't the original Moomin. She lost an argument with her brother about Immanuel Kant. Yeah. And then she wrote a sort of, kind of a caricature of Kant. It's just going over your head, Nicky. I think it is.

I'm just saying that it was, they are profound, but they're not. But there's also a division, isn't there? Because there are two things at the same time. They are a product, you know,

and you could buy Moomin merchandise, and there are these terrible Japanese TV series. There's this very cutesy, colourful face to the Moomins, which she must have felt burdened with and i think one thing that is as a as a writer that is very interesting is that she said like there are lots of people who suddenly burden that we were just talking about schultz you know suddenly you're burdened with having to chunk this stuff out and everybody loves it and you have this

hate relationship with it and it's sort of killing you like steve coogan and alan partridge or hg wells and sherlock holmes that you've got this thing around your neck and she did this completely extraordinary thing which is that she must have wanted to run away from it the way they those people do you know holmes you know conan doyle always trying to kill holmes off or you know comedians always wanting to be hamlets and and she turned around and thought well instead of running away she just poured her whole self into it she just gave everything of herself into it, you know, this is about losing

your mother, this is about being alone this is about not finding love everything that could have gone elsewhere at half cock she gave back to the Moomins and it's this incredible act of courage and generosity that's in these later books that is

just, you don't know what you're missing Also, this is a book about grief I think. No, it's the greatest book about grief, there's nothing that comes What age should you be reading these? I was nine or ten and I don't know what I got out of this but I got that we keep, because we're

English and we give prestige to misery we keep defaulting to talking about the the darkness in these books they're really funny they're really really funny and they're really joyous because like everybody who's really suffered she knows where real joy lies and it you know it's there in the spring coming back and it's there in the winter coming it's there in the turn of the year and she and it's there in the spring coming back and it's there in the winter coming and it's there in the turn of the year and it's there in your mum and all that stuff and she really grabs hold of that joy and gives it to you

and I do remember really, really locking onto that stuff and being guided by it. Also, she's not a children's writer in that sense. She is an artist who found different ways to express what she wanted to say in relation to whatever she was working in at the time. And for me, one of the great achievements of these books are, although I wouldn't have known this as a child, clearly, as they worked for me as children's books, but they are an expression of an aesthetic and a sensibility

that is always evolving. Absolutely, absolutely. The artist in the process of becoming, she is that thing. And that things are complex. That's what I remember most of it, that these were books that didn't have easy... There was huge pleasure in them, but it was never uncomplicated but i think there was an actual purpose to this book in a way i don't not not obvious overt but she is saying

goodbye and she's she's got these ardent fans who can be lost without these these moments and she's actually found a way to say no you'll be fine you'll be fine yeah and that's such such a kindness yeah and so responsible yeah it's a going away with a real kindness yeah she doesn't trash what she's but i'd be so miserable frank if i didn't hear you read the end of this book you know where from well from page one. Is that all right? You just saw him here, right? Toft has just gone into the angry place where Moominmama goes when she's cross. So the story of the book is that all these odd people

who are lonely and dysfunctional in different ways come to the Moomin family to be refreshed and find that the Moomin family aren't there, it's just this empty house. And they have to kind of save each other, which they do one by one. But the last one, though, is Toft, who you know from the beginning

is never going to leave until they come back. But actually, he sort of does leave. He goes off and walks in this place where Moomin Mama had, what does it say? It's where Moomin Mama went when she was cross. When she was cross or disappointed. And it's like, oh, that's like amazing. Because he's so idealised there

and he's got to confront the fact that she, even she had these sort of moments of fall. And so he's leaving, he's walking away and then he looks behind him and he sees a light coming towards them. The whole sea lay spread out in front of him, grey and streaked, with even white waves right out to the horizon. Toft turned his face into the wind and sat down to wait.

Now at last he could wait. The family had the wind with them and they were making straight for the shore. They were coming from some island where Toft had never been and which he would never see. Perhaps they felt like staying there, he thought. Perhaps they will make up a story about that island and tell it to themselves before they go to sleep. Toft sat high up on the mountain for several hours, watching the sea. Just before the sun went down, it threw a shaft of light through the clouds,

cold and wintry yellow, making the whole world look desolate. And then he saw the storm lantern that Moominpappa had hung at the top of the mast. It threw a gentle warm light and burnt steadily. The boat was a long way away. Tufts had plenty of time to go down through the forest and along the beach to the jetty and to be there just in time to catch the line and tie up the boat. And that's all we have time for. thanks to frank and to nat to our producer nicky birch

and to this podcast's own moomin papa and moomin mama unbound you can download all 78 backlisted plus follow up all the links clips and suggestions for further reading on our website backlisted.fm and of course you can still contact us on twitter facebook and via boundless we hope you've enjoyed this episode. We have. I was tremendously anxious going into this one because of how much I love these books. But it's been wonderful just to sit here for an hour and talk about it.

Because I honestly have not read it since I was a kid. Yeah, really? Yeah, and I was quite afraid of reading it again. I also have to, I'm going to make a confession before I say goodbye. I've been thinking about these books for over 40 years and it was only this week that I understood why the Hobgoblin's hat is called Finn Family Moomintroll in English.

It's because they wanted it to sound like Swiss Family Robinson. Is that obvious to everyone? It's taken me 40 years. Scarily obvious. Well, 40 years to work that out. I know, right? It's been revelatory for me.

If you've enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review with stars if you feel so moved on iTunes or whichever virtual jetty where the... Whichever virtual jetty where you tether your podcasts. Slash umbilical cord. Thank you, everybody. see you in a fortnight bye bye music music

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It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.