An off-beat novel about a retirement community in sunny Florida. Tove Jansson was drawn again and again to the everyday life of the aged. Not as a group apart, but as full-blooded people, with as many jealousies, urges, and joys as any other group. And so it is no wonder that in her travels through America in the 1970s, she became fascinated with what was then a particularly American instution, the retirement home, where older people live in their particular tightly knit worlds. She describes this world through several of its residents and employees making their way in an America riven by cultural divides and facing the death of its dream, as they face their own mortality.
True enthusiasts will seize on the latest rerelease, Sun City, which explores an aspect of American life—the isolation of the aging—that often goes unseen ... Operates as a series of vignettes without a strong unifying plot ... It feels less like a quirky collection of tales, of the sort that made her famous, and more like a moral indictment. It may well be a product of extreme culture shock ... Proved that she was not merely a whimsical artist and storyteller, but also a keen cultural critic who could transpose her observations into powerful prose. It served as a response to skeptics who may have considered her literary work delightfully regional but not globally significant.
Offers a kind of picaresque ... As our amphibious narrator’s focalization shifts between the variously mouse-ish (Miss Peabody), devilish (Mr. Thompson), or reserved (Mrs. Morris) residents, and variously reserved or frazzled (Miss Frey) workers, the question such narrative modes always beg...is rendered ostensibly futile by/in old age ... For all of Jansson’s jokes, the tone tends mournful, or just depressed.
It can be hard to tell Jansson’s characters apart. They all mourn and nurse their private grievances. The blur may be intentional: the sun seems to dry the distinctions out of them, and they know it ... This book’s original dust jacket called it 'an indictment of the American way of old age,' which is too strong an assertion for such a wistful tale, though it has notes of well-deserved condescension. Probably only a Scandinavian could have written it. Jansson knew she’d be retiring to the ample bosom of the Finnish welfare state, not hacking it out with clipped coupons and wraparound sunglasses.
