Fair Play

By Tove Jansson, Ali Smith and Thomas Teal

Fair Play is the type of love story that is rarely told, a revelatory depiction of contentment, hard-won and exhilarating. 

Mari is a writer and Jonna is an artist, and they live at opposite ends of a big apartment building, their studios connected by a long attic passageway. They have argued, worked, and laughed together for decades. Yet they’ve never really stopped taking each other by surprise. Fair Play shows us Mari and Jona’s intertwined lives as they watch Fassbinder films and Westerns, critique each other’s work, spend time on a solitary island (recognizable to readers of Jansson’s The Summer Book), travel through the American Southwest, and turn life into nothing less than art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781590176856

Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson (1914 - 2001) was born in Helsinki to artist parents. She was to become a celebrated artist, political cartoonist and author, but she is best known as the creator of the Moomins, one of the most successful and beloved children's book series ever written. Inspired by summers spent on the islands off Finland and Sweden, Tove created the unique world of Moominvalley and all its inhabitants. The Moomins and The Great Flood, her first book to feature the Moomins, published in 1945. Tove went on to publish twelve Moomin books between 1945 and 1977, which have sold in their millions and been translated into over forty languages. In the 1950's the Moomins became a successful cartoon strip, which was to feature in newspapers all over the world. As the Moomins' fame grew, they began to appear in television series, plays, films and a varied merchandise program soon followed. Tove also painted throughout her life and wrote novels and short stories, including the acclaimed Summer Book. But the Moomin world was never far away. As Tove said, "You feel a cold wind on your legs when you step outside Moomin Valley," In 1966, Tove received the Hans Christian Andersen Award for her lasting contribution to children's literature.

Reviews for Fair Play

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This lovely semi-autobiographical book consists of short episodic vignettes of the lives of two older women, Jonna an artist and Mari a writer. It's about aging--"time running out"--and about giving those you love the space to grow. Recommended.

[snash_44 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A series of short vignettes about two artist ladies, tersely describing the scenes and in the process making observations about life, work, and love.

[saresmoore · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I LOVED this. There's nothing I can say that Ali Smith didn't cover in her gorgeous introduction of the book. I will be revisiting this little novel frequently because I think there is so much still to learn from it.

[michael5rimmer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

We aren't introduced to Jonna and Mari - they quietly enter onto the stage and go about their lives as if we're not here, watching them. We listen in on their conversations about family trivia and art, we watch with them the second-rate Western movies which Jonna enjoys so, and which Mari tolerates because Jonna does enjoy them.When we meet them, Mari and Jonna have been together for thirty years and are sprightly still in their seventies. Each chapter is a vignette of their shared lives, displaying the little annoyances and intimacies, the small unnoticed things done to please the other, that make up the mundane existence of two people so deeply in love that they are rarely conscious of it anymore as it has become who they are. There aren't any grand dramatic scenes; even the storm that terrifies an unwanted visitor to their island is a backdrop for the human figures in the foreground, and Mari's quiet kindness towards somebody whose presence she resented until she saw their need. A road trip to the USA centres not around any great events or sights, but rather Jonna and Mari's unassuming friendship with their hotel maid, who introduces them to the patrons of an unremarkable back street bar. The closest the book gets to drama is with the coming of Wladislav, a ninety-two year old puppet sculptor whose short visit to show Mari the marionette hands he's made of her character illustrations is more disrupting and terrifying than any sea-storm. Mari, initially disconcerted by Wladyslaw's intensity and brusqueness, is instantly won over by the exquisitely expressive craftmanship of his work.We leave Mari and Jonna much as we found them, quietly, without fanfare, but certain in the knowledge of their deep and abiding love for each other, a gift to us of hope in the possibilty of living an unassuming, long life of fulfilment with another. The final line of the book is probably the most perfect ending I've read in a long time, which I won't quote, not because it's a spoiler, but because it needs the experience of the rest of the book to truly appreciate.

[sirk.bronstad · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I am confused. Why don't I love this book? I will catch it unaware someday and try again.

[booktothefuture · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All's fair in art and love. Fair Play really is amazing.

[ebt1002 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This lovely short novel is like a painting. We see Mari and Jonna living together in a spacious home and a spacious relationship on a quiet island off the coast of Finland. At first glance (the first couple of "chapters"), we are distracted by the brushstrokes of their mild bickering. As we continue to study the work, however, the women's interdependence and the warmth of their relationship rapidly become the figure while the simple tension of living and working together for decades becomes the ground. Other characters come into their lives only to highlight the depth of their connection. Having completed reading the novel in the space of one day, I felt like I had spent an enjoyable extended moment gazing at a beautiful work in an art gallery, only to wander away with a lasting impression and a strong sense of satisfaction.

[katiekrug · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A slim volume of linked vignettes, this is a nice look into the creative process and how art can enrich even seemingly mundane lives. I liked the writing and look forward to reading more of Jansson's work; there just wasn't enough here to base a higher or lower rating on. Still, a pleasant couple hours' read.

[danlai-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Even at her most obvious, Jansson is fantastic.

[lizaha_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

How long do I have to wait to be old and making work and living on an island?

[keristars_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd never really heard of Tove Jansson before picking up Fair Play, but I quite like this novel. Novella? Hm, it's really just a series of vignettes about Jonna and Mari, two women in their 60s or 70s who have been dear friends for a very, very long time, and (though it's not said directly in the text) are rather in love with each other.I'm not sure how to describe the book, except that it is lovely. I suppose I could say that it is quietly intense, too. The vignettes don't really say that much about the women, thinking back on them, yet they give a wonderfully full view and description about who they are. I really liked that.I also liked how Jonna is sketched as being analytic and angular and a bit unfeeling, and Mari is the romantic who gets emotional easily, but as the vignettes pile up, the soft and sweet aspects of Jonna's personality and her love for Mari peek out, and Mari proves to have elements to her nature that are just as hard and obsessive as Jonna might appear.I think the book is ultimately about the women's love, and friendship, and the ways of living with one another and caring for the other after years and years of being together. I really liked it, though it's a bit different from what I usually read.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While this series of vignettes is listed as fiction, quite clearly it is based on the relationship of the author and her lifelong partner. Both Jonna and Mari are artists, living together with with their studios separated by a long attic passageway. As in any relationship, they are sensitive to each other's moods. Mari know the signs that Jonna is about to have a spurt of creative activity, and Jonna knows when Mari needs her to take over the grocery shopping. They often share their creative processes, but sometimes each insists on isolation, and they are fairly critical of one another's art. Fair Play is a simple book, recording the women's daily lives: watching fireworks from a cruise ship, staying in a tacky hotel in Phoenix, watching American B-Westerns and Fassbinder films, putting up new shelves for their videotapes. In it's own way, it's lovely. But having been blown away by Jansson's The True Deceiver, I was hoping for something more.

[marensr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tove Jansson never fails to astonish me. Her children's books are gems (The Moomintrolls) that are equally lovely to read for children and adults. Her books for adults are as cold and clear as fjords or Scandinavian sunlight. She describes ordinary events with such clarity and precision that rather than remaining simple, they take on the layers of complexity that color human interaction. The short stories in Fair Play are loosely autobiographical about her relationship with her long time partner Tuulikki Pietila. Both women were artists. In the stories, they become Mari and Johnna. Each story is an examination of the way in which a partnership develops over time and the subtle negotiation between competing needs: for companionship and for independence, things that need to be said and those which can remain unsaid, love and work. While these stories will not supplant the sheer brilliance of The Summer Book and the stories in Travelling Light as my favorites they are worth reading and rereading. Jansson deserves to be discovered by a wider audience.

[mojacobs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As in The Summer Book, here are short chapters, vignettes really, telling about two women artists, about their love and friendship, work, life. Nothing spectacular but somehow the stories stick.

[readingwithtea · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Iris raves about Jansson (as do many others). I just didn't get it! This was a novel of episodes - not really short stories, because it was always the same characters, but very short episodes over the lives of two women. To call the prose spare or sparse does it, in my opinion, a credit - it was not only laconic, it was barely there at all! Jansson clearly has a talent for capturing a character with few words - tiny actions and reactions, rather than long descriptions. My issue was mostly a lack of plot, or progression - time progressed, but nothing really changed between the characters.

[junipersun · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read her "The Summer Book" when I was a young adult and remembered it as a book of yearning, so I wanted to read more about Jansson's life. (I followed that book long ago with one of the Moomintroll books & just thought it foolish.)Reading this collection of possibly autobiographical stories was a mixed experience. Some of them showed the women's lives to be so placid and blase, so full of habitual patterns, that I couldn't understand them. In other stories we can see how compromises, acceptance, and tolerance were important for the women to keep their friendship along with being true to their own natures.I particularly liked "Stars", in which Mari looks forward to an autumn camping trip, and "Viktoria" which gives a glimpse at the skills needed to live on the island, and both of those stories show the love held for her family of origin. A quote from "Viktoria" is a lesson I've noticed also: "When was it we realized we couldn't do it anymore?...it was actually interesting, not being strong enough to lift and roll anymore. It gave me ideas, you know--completely new ideas. About lifting, leverage, balance, angles of fall, about trying to use logic." (p.87)

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I always used to be impressed by the author bio in the front of the Moomin books that told us that Tove Jansson lived on her own on a small island. Obviously there were some compensations to be looked forward to in adult life...It turns out that that wasn't entirely true - the island was the site of her parents' summer-house, and she lived there only seasonally, and mostly together with her life-partner, the artist Tuulikki Pietilä. Since we wouldn't have got this rather lovely little book without that set of circumstances, I'm not too disappointed, though.Jonna and Mari are two women of a certain age - one a visual artist and film-maker, the other a writer and illustrator - who live and work together, but not too close together. They are Finnish, after all. There has to be an attic corridor with many closed doors between their two studios.We see their life in a series of short glimpses, on their island, in Helsinki and on various journeys. We see them enjoying the oddness of each other's ways of seeing the world, confronting artistic and practical problems together, quarrelling and making up, and above all feeding into each other's creative work. Although what Jansson tells us about Jonna and Mari is never objectively any more than what we might have seen and heard as a visitor to their house, put together in context it becomes an incredibly intimate account of how two people can share their lives without ever giving up their own contrasting personalities. A beautiful, restrained, delicately funny and very Nordic love story.

[askelmore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Best for: Those looking for a mix between short stories and a novel.In a nutshell:Jonna and Mari are artists and friends who are in their 70s and live at opposite ends of an apartment building on an island.Worth quoting:“She’s not shy; she just won’t bother trying to be pleasant. She thinks it’s artistic to be gloomy.”Why I chose it:My partner gave this to me as a gift, I think because it’s a novel about friendship, not romantic love, and I wish there were more of those.Review:One of my favorite TV shows is Grace & Frankie. It’s not a perfect piece of art, but I love that women in their 70s are shown as complex people with their own wants and needs, not people who are shut off in a corner, watching everyone else live their lives. I don’t think we get enough of that in popular media - the exploration of friendship outside of, say, YA shows and books. Nearly everything revolves around romantic love, and while that can be interesting to me, I think the love of a friend is so interesting as well. This book is a series of short chapters with no obvious through line. Yes, they probably should be read in order (I imagine the author had it in mind), but one chapter doesn’t necessarily follow from the next. Each has a title (similar to a short essay) as opposed to a number. Jonna and Mari are both artists - Mari, I believe, writes and illustrates stories; Jonna works in other aspects of visual art (film, paint, etc.). They seem to be very important to each other’s creative processes, stopping in during the workday while also picking up on where the other is in their journey on a particular piece of art. They also have visitors, take trips, get stuck in storms. They clearly care deeply about each other, in a way that is so familiar that they know what to do next without discussion. It’s sweet and interesting. They also aren’t perfect. Jonna can be a bit short, and Mari a bit passive-aggressive. Jonna strikes me as a bit more selfish, but not to a problematic degree. They are both independent and supportive of each other, and it’s lovely to read.Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:Keep it - I can see myself reading it again, especially as I get older.

[lethalmauve · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Familiarity and understanding in a committed relationship and lifelong connection seep through each short story in Tove Jansson's Fair Play. Reads like fragments of memories permeated by an enduring albeit muted love between two women, the infectious charm and humour of these stories is delicately drawn through household chores, hobbies, vacations, even the usual banter, inside jokes, and intersection of their work which sprung from years of togetherness and companionship. It's where support is limpid beyond the suggestions and criticisms they have for/of each other. And while this collection wholeheartedly recognises how one gets accustomed to someone's constant presence, it also admires the importance of one's independence within the relationship; that one's identity should not disappear nor get compromised by one's devotion to another. Since Fair Play takes this relationship centre stage then almost mirrors the partnership between Tove and Tooti, it's a little disappointing how it somehow cowardly conceals the real nature of the relationship by referring to each other as a 'friend.' Its subtle, intimate moments can feel distant too. And it is perhaps the unavoidable cost of any story pulled directly from personal experiences, much more when it's about a romantic affair (particularly a same-sex relationship during the 1950s) carefully celebrated in hushed tones and soft murmurs. Nonetheless, a worthwhile collection that pulls the mouth into a contented smile.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Turnabout is fair play. In Tove Jansson’s Fair Play, a precise and delicate series of dramatic scenes are presented that paint the relationship between Mari and Jonna, lifelong friends, artistic colleagues, travelling companions. They tolerate each other’s minor manias, accommodate their idiosyncrasies, make blunders and rectify them, and contribute to each other’s art – writing (primarily) in the case of Mari, visual art in the case of Jonna. But most of all they remain open to the almost priceless small acts of kindness that are possible when love, respect, and friendship are the deep foundation of a relationship.Such spare descriptive writing seemingly insists on transmuting into symbolism. For example, Mari and Jonna share a well-weathered boat named Viktoria, and fathers that were each named Viktor. But even here, Jansson refuses to accept mere symbolism opting instead for the transformative effects of nostalgia. In like fashion, their experience of the American west in the segment set in Phoenix follows hard on the heels of a discussion of the B-movie western. You might be thinking Baudrillard, but don’t. As the hostess of the Phoenix bar says, “Give these ladies some space…They’re from Finland.” That sounds like good advice. Recommended.

[janeajones · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this series of linked stories, Jansson explores the daily lives and relationship of two artists, Mari and Jonna, who have lived together for decades. It's pretty clear the stories are based on the lives of Jansson and her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, the Finnish graphic artist. The brief stories are illuminating snapshots of their work, their travels, their memories and their accommodation of each other as they live separately, but together. It's a quiet celebration of art and love.

[japaul22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a short book of vignettes exploring the relationship of Jonna and Mari. They have been friends/lovers for years and are both artists in their 50s. The books moves from their city apartment to an isolated island where they spend their summers to their wandering vacations, but regardless of the setting the focus is on their interactions with each other and with their artistic endeavors. Mari is a writer and Jonna is an artist.The book quietly and subtly shows how these two women support each other despite the typical frustrations that all relationships have. I've read that this is semi-autobiographical, depicting the relationship that Tove Jansson had with her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, a Finnish artist.I found this book quiet but satisfying. I don't think it's as memorable as the other books by Jansson that I've read (The Summer Book and The True Deceiver) but I enjoyed it.