By Tove Jansson

with paintings by Tuulikki Pietilä

From the publisher: In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson—author of the iconic novel The Summer Book and the beloved Moomin series—built a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. For thirty years, Tove and her beloved partner, Tuulikki “Tooti” Pietilä, lived, painted, and wrote, energized by flora, fauna, the shifting seascapes, and solitude and shifting seascapes. Jansson’s spare, quirky prose, and Tooti’s subtle artwork combine to form a work of meditative beauty. Notes from an Island is both a beautiful chronicle of a rugged ecology and an intimate collaboration between to artists in love with each other—and the island itself.

Favorite review: “Her style is not at all ‘poetic’—quite the contrary. It is prose of the very highest order; it is pure prose. Through its quiet clarity we see unreachable depths, threatening darkness, promised treasures.”—Ursula K. LeGuin, The Guardian