I read Moominpappa At Sea earlier this summer and Moominvalley In November just now, first time in a very long time that I've re-read the last two Moomin books, and they still hold up incredibly well; if anything, they work better now than they did back then. The series starts out as "just" well-written children's stories, then gradually get more adult - not in the sense that she adds more sex and violence, but simply in that the characters (both young and old) grow up and are forced to look at themselves, at how they see others, and their place in the world, all set against the backdrop of one of the most gorgeous descriptions of autumn and winter I've ever read. This last book doesn't even have the Moomins themselves in it except in spirit, instead it focuses on a bunch of minor characters who happen to wash up in the same house. It almost edges into metafiction at times, with one of the characters reading a book that seems to mirror his own life and ending each chapter with "End of chapter", and above all of course the central plot: a half dozen lost souls who actively seek out the Moominvalley, knowing that it's a children's fairytale land where nobody is ever sad or alone or neurotic or stuck in a rut, and not only finding it abandoned but also having to face that the world doesn't have places like that, and that hiding inside the image of one doesn't work. And of course, being sad or alone or neurotic or stuck in a rut is what the Moomin books were always about on some level, it's just that by now, the characters have grown up enough to face it head on. Beautiful.

There are certainly a lot of parallels between the later Moomin books and The True Deceiver (the characters are all but interchangeable, just substitue "paws" for "hands") introverted characters deliberately building a false image of the world and their relationships to others, the very typically Scandinavian head-down-fist-clenched-in-pocket-mumbling-under-breath stubbornness, and obviously the sense of being at once disconnected from and a slave to nature. Oddly, Moominvalley In November still ends more hopefully as winter comes crashing in, than The True Deceiver does when spring breaks the ice again.