LOVELY, DIGNIFIED PROSE. - Rated 
Having read and enjoyed 'The Summer Book' and 'Fair Play' I came to 'A Winter Book' with great anticipation and was not at all disappointed.
The short extracts from Tove Jansson's life blend together to portray a life well lived. A life requiring strength of purpose and of character, as well as the sheer physical strength of living on an island and relying on oneself for survival.
'You should never keep a single inessential object in your boat' is her philosophy as well as profoundly sensible advice.
Her stories, pared down to the essentials, are metaphors in themselves.
She tells us of her experiences, but at the same time, it is her voice which we may hear in times of trouble or uncertainty.
'It's all a question of patina' she says about their furniture and the lesson which her mother learnt about the marks which were left on the furniture after parties, and we feel that after a long life lived to the full, 'it's all a question of patina' - the gloss which comes of long, hard use and the gloss left after a life has been lived.
At the end, when she and her beloved 'Tooti' are clearing up and leaving, she writes:
' There is a fine balance between the absolute calm of arrival and the excitement of departure, then I crossed out 'fine' and added 'both are indispensable' at the end, and began to wonder what I had really meant.'
This is the philosophy of a woman at peace with herself towards the end of her life, when she hasn't the physical strength to go on, but she has the emotional strength to say good-bye.
'On the last day...Tooti found one of our kites from the 1960s and took it out onto the slope. Just for fun, she gave it a little push on its tail and at that moment a gust of wind came along and took the kite with it and it flew high, straight up, and continued far out across the Gulf of Finland.'
So ends 'The Winter Book' and we imagine Tove Jansson's spirit flying 'straight up.. far out across the Gulf of Finland.'
This is a delightful book and well worth buying.
You will read it often because you will need it often.
Wonderful - Rated
I got this book after loving The Summer Book so much. I was a little daunted to find that this was not a novel, but a collection of short stories. It is often the case that those who write great novels write mediocre short stories as they are very different disciplines. Luckily Jansson excels at both. The stories are slight, almost like sketches. Some deal with her own memories of bohemian childhood, others are straightforward fiction. The memoir stories are often very funny, with that peculiar melancholy that haunts much of her writing about the moomins. I read some of them to my children and they found them hilarious and touching. The only fault I can find is that these are an amalgamation of stories from several volumes of Jansson's work, which has yet to be published in its entirety in English. I would much rather have read the books as they are meant to be rather than having the stories presented to me by an editor. Having said that, better to have this than nothing at all. I am just hoping they hurry up and print everything she has written.
Extremely polished and poised but ultimately unsatisfactory - Rated 
Tove Jansson's short stories are beautifully constructed without a doubt. Her use of language (and its translation here) is artful and evocotive, and her sense of place is skillfully transmitted to the reader through these tales.
However, they seemed to skate along on the surface of the subject, giving a glimpse of something powerful but never the whole emotion. I'm a fan of the short story form and always appreciate it when an author can drag me into a new reality with unfamiliar characters -- and pull off a dramatic wallop (or at the very least a knowing smile or wince) at the conclusion of each tale.
Yet I read the Winter stories with an increasing sense of distance and a lack of fulfilment. They're a technical tour de force -- but they just didn't dig themselves into my consciousness. Reading them was a bit like visiting an art gallery with a curious sense of disappointment; I could tell that I should be enjoying them but it just wasn't happening.
Maybe they're just too deft, and too intangible. For me, anyway.
Let's be a little more 'objective'.... - Rated 
This review is per pro the Appleton Book Club (6? members) from N.Yorkshire and we had previously read The Summer Book.
We did not think, on one reading, that this collection of short stories was equal to The Summer Book. Some of the first stories in the collection were felt to be a tad muddled, though the word 'muddled' doesn't quite say it and no one will want to read an essay on it here.
However, overall consensus was that it was a pleasure and privelege to read it. Snow, The Iceberg, The Squirrel and; Taking Leave all received a lot of praise with many other enduring images to treasure from amongst the other stories.
Jansson has a fantastic gift for selecting almost miraculously appropriate observations in order to describe a thing with tedium defying brevity.
The book continues, understandably enough, Jansson's theme of the child mind and the child-like, and the insights into the realities of the human experience which this view point can reveal. Although, again, read The Summer Book for the ultimate expression (?) of Jansson's thoughts on this, the convergence/divergence between youth and old age.
The book itself publ. by 'Sort of Books' is well laid out, easy to read, pleasant to hold and has several insightful and appropriate black and white photo's from the Jansson (?) archive. It is a short read which will gift to you many 'permanent possessions of the mind'.
Happy reading,
R.
A book for all seasons... - Rated
Tove Jansson's "A Winter Book" cherry-picks short stories from her autobiographical "A Sculptor's Daughter" and adds later gems to deliver an unforgettable collection of work. Her cool, clear gaze takes in vivid moments from childhood (check "The Stone" and the stunning image left by "The Iceberg") through to the unsentimental, yet very poignant, "Taking Leave" which deals with some of the problems of ageing and coming to terms with failing powers.
Tove Jansson was an extraordinary children's writer, and it's great to see some of her work for adults finally translated into English. And what a lovely job Sort Of have done: good, clean cover design, and intelligent use of photographs throughout. Ali Smith's introduction does justice to Jansson's writing. Very few children's authors have the capability to write for adults also. Tove Jansson's honesty, clarity and sense of humour shine throughout.
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