In ‘The Summer book’ Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer—its sunlight and storms—into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existences, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of hers. As they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent. Together they amble over coastline and forest in easy companionship, build boats from bark, create a miniature Venice, write a fanciful study of local bugs. They discuss things that matter to young and old alike: life, death, the nature of God and love. “On an island,” thinks the grandmother, “everything is complete.” In ‘The Summer Book’, Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the varied joys and sorrows of like.

The Summer Book - Wikipedia The Summer Book - Wikipedia

Grandmother is the book's force, but the interactions between her and Sophia, her young granddaughter, fuel it. Sophia's mother has died before the book starts and, though there is only one mention of it, Sophia's outbursts, actions and reactions are colored by her personal tragedy. Grandmother, though always remaining true to her cranky self, understands, worries and mostly knows what to do to help Sophia. a b Knight, Lucy (1 September 2022). " 'A masterpiece': why Tove Jansson's The Summer Book is as relevant as ever at 50". The Guardian. This slim, magical, life-affirming novel tells the story of a young girl and her grandmother, who spend their summer together on a small, isolated island in the Gulf of Finland. Absent of sentimentality, full of love and humor and wisdom, this is a tale about how much fun two people can have in the middle of nowhere, when they are practicing social isolation in earnest.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, The New York Times The Summer Book’ is often talked about this way. Tove Jansson wrote it in 1972, a year after the death of her mother, the artist Signe Hammersten. Their bond had been close and Jansson’s grief was intense; it is the dark generative heart of a book that describes the relations between a very old woman and her six-year-old granddaughter, Sophia, and the life that goes on around them on a very small island over the course of a single summer”. Everything was fine, and yet everything was overshadowed by a great sadness. It was August, and the weather was sometimes stormy and sometimes nice, but for Grandmother, no matter what happened, it was only time on top of time, since everything is vanity and a chasing after the wind.”

Jansson transports us to this island and helps us to see it through the loving eyes of a person who has known it forever and the wondering eyes of a person who is just discovering all its hidden treasures. I kept thinking of another work of this type, The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories, in which the natural environment is almost a character itself. The Summer Book gave me that same immersed feeling. It's like a watercolor of only four or five easy strokes, that you can't help but stare at for hours.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson | Goodreads The Summer Book by Tove Jansson | Goodreads

Jansson’s] writing is all magical deception, her sentences simple and loaded; the novel reads like looking through clear water and seeing, suddenly, the depth.” — Ali Smith I feel I have been overusing the word wonderful lately but The Summer Book is just such a reading experience. A grandmother and child and nature, all three somewhat wild and uncontrollable, live along with their son/father, during the summer, on a barren island they all love. This was written 40 years ago but is really timeless in its story of a child's unrelenting thirst for knowledge and stubborn daily brawls with the world at large. Most of her time is spent alternately loving, hating and hiking with her grandmother who is passing through her own difficult phase of life as she feels her body slowing down. And even where so little seems to happen, everything is of consequence -- with Jansson's success also built on the fact that she doesn't try to hammer home that point, but rather lets the reader come to see it on their own. The Summer Book (in the original Swedish, Sommarboken) is a novel written by the Finnish author Tove Jansson in 1972.Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), during World War II. She said later that the war had depressed her, and she had wanted to write something naive and innocent. Besides the Moomin novels and short stories, Tove Jansson also wrote and illustrated four original and highly popular picture books. Jansson evokes the chilly nights of August, the virulence of summer storms and the silent walks on the untamed beaches of a lost island in Finland with tenderness and mischievous humor; calling out to the hidden child that lays dormant in adults and the grown-up that peeks from behind the guileless eyes of children. The novelist Philip Pullman described the book as "a marvelous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny." [4] My Review: I am a person who likes quiet. My home environment, when I'm able to force my will on my roommate, is free of audio pollution like TV and radio. Perhaps in compensation, I love spy stories and space-war epics and historical novels with battles, explosions, near misses with the main character dangling from rooftops...the very essence of un-quiet. It is beautifully done. What might, in less skilful hands, have been mawkish or twee, maintains to the last sentence a precise and rigorous habit of observation, an acute sense of the play of emotion between people and the landscape they inhabit, and a remarkable ability to render accurately the emotions of the very old and the very young.’ Jane Shilling, The Scotsman

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It was an early, very warm morning in July, and it had rained during the night. The bare granite steamed, the moss and crevices were drenched with moisture, and all the colors everywhere had deepened. Below the veranda, the vegetation in the morning shade was like a rain forest of lush, evil leaves and flowers, which she had to be careful not to break as she searched. She held one hand in front of her mouth and was constantly afraid of losing her balance. Sophia: “ What a dumb question! You know they all wear dresses. But now listen carefully: if one of them wants to know for sure what kind another is, he just flies a under him and looks to see if he is wearing pants.” D'Alessandro, Anthony (2 March 2023). "Glenn Close To Star In Charlie McDowell's Feature Take Of Finnish Novel 'The Summer Book' ". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved 3 March 2023.

Grandmother walked up over the bare granite and thought about birds in general. It seemed to her no other creature had the same dramatic capacity to underline and perfect events – the shifts in the seasons and the weather, the changes that run through people themselves.”