From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

Fair Play

Tove Jansson,

Thomas Teal (Translator)

Start date: December 15, 2018

Finish date: January 15, 2019

Discussion: Group Reads Discussions

Why we're reading this: Translated Fiction
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Group Reads Discussions

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last updated Jan 18, 2013 07:12PM

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What Members Thought

Jan 01, 2025 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it really liked it

Shelves: author-woman, 4-star, a-read-gelesen-2025, genre-fiction, author-white, challenges-all-2025, europe-finland, a-reviewed, theme-f-f, publdate-1980s

It's sentences like this that gladden my heart:

'Wladyslaw continued pacing back and forth. Finally he said, "You know nothing, you are barely seventy, you have learned nothing. I'm ninety-two, does that not tell you something?"

(She replies btw, "It tells me that you're pretty proud of being ninety-two!") (p.91)

And: '"Well, how old is she herself, this person?"
"She's not old -- barely fifty." (p.96)

What breath of fresh air! To have two women in their seventies, intellectual, loving, immersed in t It's sentences like this that gladden my heart:

'Wladyslaw continued pacing back and forth. Finally he said, "You know nothing, you are barely seventy, you have learned nothing. I'm ninety-two, does that not tell you something?"

(She replies btw, "It tells me that you're pretty proud of being ninety-two!") (p.91)

And: '"Well, how old is she herself, this person?"
"She's not old -- barely fifty." (p.96)

What breath of fresh air! To have two women in their seventies, intellectual, loving, immersed in their work, doing their thing, realising their physical limitation, all without sentimentality, ideology, makwishness, judginess. All with good humour, tact, curmudgeonliness, feeling, a sense of the absurd. As Esther Freud blurbs on the cover: "tender, eccentric and fiercely independent."

The two women in this slim volume are Mari and Jonna, and they are thinly disguised stand-ins for Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä. Several photos of Jansson and one of Pietilä grace this edition. So it's tricky to decide, is this fiction? or non-fiction? I decide on fiction as the names are made up. It's interesting: we (or I) know Jansson, she looms large as the important person and there's a tendency (in me, anyway) to see Pietilä as secondary, as Jansson's "partner" but in this collection of vignettes of their life together, she (Jonna) emerges as a formidable person, and of course she is, was, as any partner in a relationship is. The dialogue between these two is wonderful: terse, saying as much as it doesn't say, abrupt.

My favourite vignettes were 'In the great city of Phoenix' (placing such individualist personages as those two in the middle of Arizona is delicious) and the hilarious 'Wladyslaw'. Each story is about something small, and each story is about something profound.

Lovely.

I deliberately didn't finish this in 2024 so that I could use it to fulfill 2025 book reading challenge prompts. I've not yet decided whether to go for 'set in Scandinavia' or 'romance where main female character is over 35'. ('Something Bookish' reading challenge). I think it will be easier to find another book set in Scandinavia because romances with people over 60 are rare. (over 35? I'm opting for well over, thank you very much) This book is not strictly speaking a romance in the genre sense but it is a love story so I'm counting it as a yes.

I've decided: love story over 60 it is. :) ...more

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May 01, 2021 Julie rated it really liked it

Lovely to read this quiet, contemplative book of stories on this stormy afternoon. I understand why it is a classic, a peek into to the lives of two artists that live and work together. In their time they were seen as companions but it seems so obvious that they love and care for each exceeded the false boundaries of the time. #ReadingEurope #Finland

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Aug 14, 2024 Annie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Fair Play is a novella-in-vignettes built around fleeting moments with scenes from the working life of an artist and a writer, Jonna and Mari, who live separately and together. They write, paint, make movies, photograph people and places, watch foreign films on the TV, go fishing, bicker, fret and support each other.

Rove Jansson’s prose is terse, deadpan and understated with humorous and playful,twists and turns. It’s a tender yet prickly love story devoid of grand gestures and drama, where lif ...more

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