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The darkest days of winter are a time for revisiting old favourites, and while sometimes it's nice to be reminded of summer, my wintry reads are often wintry books. I came late to the Moomins, so Moominland Midwinter is a fairly recent favourite rather than a childhood favourite, but it's no less suited to winter reading for that.
Moomins normally hibernate, but in this book Moomintroll wakes up just after New Year and can't get back to sleep, so he goes out alone to explore the strange and often frightening landscape of Moomin Valley in winter. The book perfectly captures the bleak loneliness of winter, but somehow it's comforting as well. Moomintroll learns that spring does come, that even though the sun may disappear it will return; he has the company of the sensible and practical Too-Ticky (modelled on Tove Jansson's girlfriend) as well as Little My (who predictably sees winter as a great adventure), and it turns out that even the terrifying Groke is as much to be pitied as feared. Always a delight to revisit.
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The Rough Collier is the fifth of Pat McIntosh's mysteries set in fifteenth-century Scotland. In this one, Gil Cunningham and his wife Alys are staying at his mother's house in the Lanarkshire countryside when a body is discovered buried in a peat-bog, sparking an accusation of witchcraft against a local woman and leading Gil to begin an investigation into the identity of the corpse and the whereabouts of another man who has been missing for five weeks. I really like Gil and Alys and enjoyed seeing how their relationship has developed after five months of marriage, and the mystery was entertaining enough even if I had spotted the murderer by the end of chapter 2 and found Gil and Alys's continuing failure to suspect them somewhat frustrating.
Moomins normally hibernate, but in this book Moomintroll wakes up just after New Year and can't get back to sleep, so he goes out alone to explore the strange and often frightening landscape of Moomin Valley in winter. The book perfectly captures the bleak loneliness of winter, but somehow it's comforting as well. Moomintroll learns that spring does come, that even though the sun may disappear it will return; he has the company of the sensible and practical Too-Ticky (modelled on Tove Jansson's girlfriend) as well as Little My (who predictably sees winter as a great adventure), and it turns out that even the terrifying Groke is as much to be pitied as feared. Always a delight to revisit.
***
The Rough Collier is the fifth of Pat McIntosh's mysteries set in fifteenth-century Scotland. In this one, Gil Cunningham and his wife Alys are staying at his mother's house in the Lanarkshire countryside when a body is discovered buried in a peat-bog, sparking an accusation of witchcraft against a local woman and leading Gil to begin an investigation into the identity of the corpse and the whereabouts of another man who has been missing for five weeks. I really like Gil and Alys and enjoyed seeing how their relationship has developed after five months of marriage, and the mystery was entertaining enough even if I had spotted the murderer by the end of chapter 2 and found Gil and Alys's continuing failure to suspect them somewhat frustrating.
