The Island by Tove Jansson, 1961
The magic trick:
Appearing to be a lovely piece of descriptive writing about a physical setting but in fact turning out to be a descriptive piece about human feelings
“The Island” will strike the reader as a nice piece of descriptive writing. At least at first. There are some vivid sentences here detailing what this island looks like and how it makes the narrator feel.
But soon we realize the emphasis is far skewed toward those feelings for the narrator. The way the island looks is one thing. But we see this is in fact a story about how the narrator feels and how those feelings change.
And that’s quite a trick on Jansson’s part.
The selection:
Everything is turned outward in calm contemplation of familiar things whose uninterrupted transformations create a remarkable feeling of comfort and suspense.
The mutating sea, the beach that rises and sinks and changes shape, everything that grows and dies and grows again in a new and surprising place, the way in which trees and shrubs withstand the storm, decay takes its natural course on everything one has built, and the pleasure of recognition and repetition.
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