Reading Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver is like walking across a frozen lake wondering whether the creaking ice will hold. It’s a beautiful, unsettling book. It asks philosophical questions, doesn’t spoon-feed answers, and slides between an omniscient narrator and two differing first person perspectives.

The deceiver is yellow-eyed Katri Kling, a social outcast in an isolated hamlet who cons her way into the home and life of celebrated book illustrator Anna Aemelin. It’s a book about perception, trust, money, artistic development, manners, and the power of good adventure stories.

“Mats got first choice, and he always chose a book about the sea. When he’d read it, it went to Anna, and then they’d talk about it. It was a ritual. They said little about themselves or the things that happened around them. They spoke only about the people who lived in their books in a world of steadfast chivalry and ultimate justice.”

I read it slowly. There’s an eerie mood conjured by the text that doesn’t want rushing and there seem to be subtle truths in every paragraph.

This is the first of Jansson’s books I’ve read and I was particularly drawn to the passages which mull over artistic creation and craftsmanship. It’s a thought-provoking, curious little gem and I’d like to track down a copy of Fair Play and The Summer Book - perhaps even a Moomin.

…

The edition pictured here was translated from Swedish by Thomas Teal and includes an introduction by Ali Smith. It was originally published in 1982 as Den ärliga bedragaren.

Details

• The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

• Published by Sort Of Books, 2009; London, UK.

• ISBN: 978-0-954899-5

• 208 pages, paperback with flaps and inside cover photos.

• Fiction, Scandinavian fiction