The Exploits of Moominpappa - Tove Jansson

The Moomins series takes a nose dive with this volume, which is an autobiographical account of Moominpappa's extremely limited and unexciting early adventures. Unlike some of the other books, The Exploits suffers from a severe lack of creativity and imagination on Jansson's part. I struggle to remember the nonsensical happenings, but it begins with a Dickensian, bildungsroman escape from an orphanage, followed by a voyage on a house boat with weirdly named, badly introduced characters, and finishes with something to do with the colonisation of an island. The whole book is ill thought-out and badly written, although I'm not sure how much of this is a translation issue. It might be worth pointing out that there is a different translator for this book than previous installments. Ironically, this book is supposed to be the product of Moominpappa's lifework, but there's very little of interest here and nothing about his oft alluded to tryst with the beer drinking hattifatteners. A remarkably unimpressive story even by childrens' standards.

Rating: 2/5