Fair Play
Fair Play by Tove Jansson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Purchased at Community Book Store (Park Slope), read alongside Moominpappa’s Memoirs. Jansson’s children’s books were usually published with a bio stating that the artist/writer lived alone in a little cottage on an island, but in point of fact she was one half of one of those mythical creator-lesbian protocouples. So it was an especial pleasure to read Fair Play while also reading about Too-ticky, Jansson’s kid-washed version of her long-term companion (lover) the artist Tuulikki Pietila, some of whom I suppose shows up in its pages as well. The book reminds me a bit of my favorite NYT Real Estate article about friends (or were they lovers?) sharing adjoining apartments, or living in apartments subdivided into two living spaces: in this case we have Mari (a writer) and Jonna (an artist), two women living and working together and apart. Especially loved the first bit where Mari reorganizes Jonna’s studio. Living arrangements, arrangements more generally, lovers’ rituals and creatives’ spats, lingering disagreements and surfacing agreements sublimated into illustrations or Konica movies. Ali Smith’s introduction blurbs it better: “This novel is about creativity from the start—about how to take a day…and make it really new and fresh, no matter what age you are, what life you’re in.”
