An affectionate biography ... Westin compares her to Shakespeare, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, even "Chekov spiced with Poe". Actually, Jansson needs no such comparisons: that she wrote well is self-evident from the enduring popularity of her surreal and prankish tales.
Thanks to Boel Westin's biography of Tove Jansson, with its detailed analyses of its subject's distinguished work, we can view the joyous springtime experiences of these hippopotamus-like creatures in historical and personal terms ... Since her death in 2001, Jansson's reputation has arguably rested as strongly on pared, magical prose for adult readers as on her children's stories. But Westin shows that this division is inappropriate; Tove's unique imagination and art pervade both.
