The Summer Book collects twenty-two summer scenes and episodes, centred around a young girl, Sophia, and her old grandmother, and the time they spend together on a northern island in the Gulf of Finland. Here," said her grandmother. "I was standing right there and they fell somewhere in the peonies." They looked together. I could read this story forever. I could easily make it an annual tradition to read it every summer. I have limited patience with child characters and narrators, particularly when they are irritating, demanding and pouty, as is the 6 year old character, Sophia. Jansson modeled the character on her niece (yikes!). The grandmother, based on Jansson’s mother, is easier to digest, because who doesn’t enjoy a sarcastic, cantankerous senior who once shouted “Quiet! Or I will throw up on you!” when the kid wouldn’t stop fussing? Geoffrey is the author of the middle-school aged adventure-mystery series, The Three Hares, and the near-future, speculative fiction novel, The Slummer.

There is nothing comforting about it, and yet if you are afraid to see it in his own terms and look to it for comfort, for solace, you’ll be left worse off than you were before”.

The Summer Book manages to make you feel good as well as wise, without having to make too much effort . . . [it] says so much that we want to hear in such an accessible form, without ever really saying anything at all. Sophia has “no understanding for people who have these very harsh opinions about who they choose to live with”. This echoes the sentiment of The Summer Book’s grandmother, who, after an argument with her grandchild about the existence of the devil, firmly tells her young relative: “You can believe what you like, but you must learn to be tolerant.” It also feels, as we navigate the climate crisis and generational culture wars, highly relevant. The slim volume tells the story of a grandmother and granddaughter exploring, arguing and playing together during a summer on the island. As Smith puts it: “It would be easy to be sentimental here. Jansson never is.” Instead, she uses this intergenerational relationship to highlight the importance of respect: for one another, for differing opinions and for the planet. It’s a notably open-minded book, which is perhaps reflective of the open-minded life that Jansson and her family lived. Tove’s poking fun at what people might think is normality

The grandmother when ill sometimes feels dizzy. She takes Lupatro. I didn’t know what that was, and looked it up and it’s a barbiturate (sedative)...not sure why she would take that if she felt dizzy. It was also an anti-seizure medication used to treat epilepsy.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. Jansson's variety of episodes, ranging from those where little of note seems to happen to the modestly dramatic (including one of the great storms in recent memory, which Sophia thinks she caused -- only to have her grandmother take that burden from her), are at best loosely connected, yet this mosaic approach makes for a very rich picture. Translated from Swedish and written in 1974 these 22 short vignettes occur on a small island off the Gulf of Finland. Sophia, a precocious six year old, and her wise and spunky grandmother explore this island during one summer at their cottage. Whether seeking out the flora and fauna, weathering a violent storm, dealing with a difficult child or snooping around the vacant home of a newcomer, they delight in the present. Sophia, like many young children, has many difficult questions: life, death, love, God. She has recently lost her mother and her grandmother must answer her inquiries; she does so with wisdom and love. Every child should have a grandparent like Sophia's. Although she has age related physical limitations, she is always ready for an adventure: crawling on her hands and knees, carving woodland creatures, inventing stories and swimming in the frigid northern waters. They have their snits and their moods, but the loving relationship is never doubted. Within the family, Sophia says, “there was just an unexplained but self-evident tolerance for whomever”. As a child, she was never explicitly told about the nature of Tove and Tuulikki’s relationship – homosexuality would still have been classified as an illness in Finland at the time – but she could see that they loved one another, and that the other members of her family accepted them.

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.Bloody nitwit, Grandmother muttered to herself. Out loud she said, ‘You better ask your father about generations and all that. Ask him to draw it on a piece of paper. If you’re interested’”.

It's like a watercolor of only four or five easy strokes, that you can't help but stare at for hours. The story really dives into some deep social issues. I wasn't surprised at some of the hate, but I was really happy to see some compassion throughout the story. Lots of tears of sadness and joy all around.

The Slummer

When I read the synopsis, I thought to myself, how original can a story like this be? But I decided to give it a shot, and commented to the author that I would read it over Christmas and give it an honest review. I loved it and it's a perfect read for a summer which will, I think, be memorable for many of us as a kind of shadow season, a time carved out from normal life and defined by the absence of normality. 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. There are cats, there are caves, there is the wind, “always blowing. . . from one direction to another.” There are the waves. . . there is a storm. The Summer Book (in the original Swedish, Sommarboken) is a novel written by the Finnish author Tove Jansson in 1972.