Moominpappa at Sea

We recently jumped forward in the Moomins series to read Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson. We have only read three of the Moomin books thus far (Finn Family Moomintroll, Comet in Moominland, and Moominpappa at Sea) but I have already noticed that each translator's text has its own feel. Picking up Moominpappa at Sea was in part colored by our recent abandonment of Moominpappa's Memoirs, which M. and I found dense and a bit hard to follow at the sentence level. I wasn't sure whether this was a fault of the original text or that of the translator. In any case, Moominpappa at Sea is translated by Kingsley Hart, and the combination of original and translation is a winning one.

M. was with me on every page as we followed the Moomin family's journey from Moominvalley to an island, uninhabited but for a lone fisherman who (spoiler alert) turns out to be the lighthouse keeper. Moominpappa is having a bit of a midlife crisis, Moominmamma feels homesick and paints a garden reminiscent of her garden in Moominvalley onto the lighthouse walls, and Moomintroll and Little My (his cranky adopted sister) spend most of their time exploring the island on their own. As usual, Moomintroll and Little My are refreshingly independent, and much of the beauty in this book revolves around Moomintroll's attempts to keep secret his nighttime escapades to track down the seahorses (literal horses of the sea) and his budding friendly relationship with the Groke, the cold, desperate creature that has followed them across the sea because of her attraction to the Moomin family's hurricane lantern.

Some online reviewers have called this book inferior to some of the others in the series on account of its adult narrative (in the sense of its focus on Moominpappa's midlife crisis). I would disagree entirely; Moominpappa at Sea, like the other two Moomin books we have read, but even more so, describes the rich inner life of a child on the brink of adolescence, a mix of magical thinking, desire for independence, and a wish to be recognized and noticed by those closest to them.