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The dark side of the Moomins
Tove Jansson’s beloved stories, which turn 80 this year, are not cute: they are angry tales of apocalypse and breakdown.
A tale of displaced people and dangerous predators and living on borders, the first of the nine Moomin books begins with Moomintroll and Moominmamma arriving, “late in the afternoon one day at the end of August”, in “the deepest part of the great forest”. Here, in his attempt to control the waves, he loses his mind, while a desolate Moominmamma hides inside the mural of Moominvalley that she’s painted on the wall and Moomintroll, in love with a seahorse and profoundly depressed, finds a patch of earth on which to sleep. Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes by throwing him down the Reichenbach Falls, and after 30 years of living with Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie described him as a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep”.
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