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كتاب الصيف
صوفيا طفلةٌ جريئةٌ وحادّة الطباع، بخلاف جدّتها التي ترعاها بعد وفاة والدتها.
في كلّ صيفٍ تخوضان معاً مغامرةً جديدةً من نوعٍ مختلفٍ: كاستكشاف أجزاءٍ من الجزيرة التي تعيشان فيها، والتعرّف إلى أنواعٍ جديدةٍ من الطيور، والسباحة في الخليج الخطِر من دون عِلم والد صوفيا، والنوم في خيمةٍ، وبناء نموذجٍ مصغّرٍ لمدينة البندقيّة، وتأليف كتابٍ عن الحشرات.
ومن دون التطرّق إلى حقيقة مشاعرهما، تمضيان يومهما في حواراتٍ ونقاشاتٍ لا تنتهي عن كلّ شيء: معنى الحياة والموت، وماهيّة الله والشيطان، والجنّة والجحيم، ومفاهيم الحُبّ، والعائلة، والصداقة، والتسامح.
عبْر خلْق عالمٍ متكاملٍ في جزيرةٍ صغيرةٍ ومعزولةٍ، تكتب "توفه يانسون" -بأسلوبٍ سحريٍّ، وجُملٍ بسيطةٍ محمّلةٍ بمفاهيمَ عميقةٍ- روايةً عذبةً عن الصداقة التي تربط بين طفلةٍ تبدأ رحلتها في الحياة، وجدّتها التي تقترب من نهاية هذه الرحلة.
في كلّ صيفٍ تخوضان معاً مغامرةً جديدةً من نوعٍ مختلفٍ: كاستكشاف أجزاءٍ من الجزيرة التي تعيشان فيها، والتعرّف إلى أنواعٍ جديدةٍ من الطيور، والسباحة في الخليج الخطِر من دون عِلم والد صوفيا، والنوم في خيمةٍ، وبناء نموذجٍ مصغّرٍ لمدينة البندقيّة، وتأليف كتابٍ عن الحشرات.
ومن دون التطرّق إلى حقيقة مشاعرهما، تمضيان يومهما في حواراتٍ ونقاشاتٍ لا تنتهي عن كلّ شيء: معنى الحياة والموت، وماهيّة الله والشيطان، والجنّة والجحيم، ومفاهيم الحُبّ، والعائلة، والصداقة، والتسامح.
عبْر خلْق عالمٍ متكاملٍ في جزيرةٍ صغيرةٍ ومعزولةٍ، تكتب "توفه يانسون" -بأسلوبٍ سحريٍّ، وجُملٍ بسيطةٍ محمّلةٍ بمفاهيمَ عميقةٍ- روايةً عذبةً عن الصداقة التي تربط بين طفلةٍ تبدأ رحلتها في الحياة، وجدّتها التي تقترب من نهاية هذه الرحلة.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Tove Jansson
740 books3,530 followersTove Jansson was born and died in Helsinki, Finland. As a Finnish citizen whose mother tongue was Swedish, she was part of the Swedish-speaking Finns minority. Thus, all her books were originally written in Swedish.
Although known first and foremost as an author, Tove Jansson considered her careers as author and painter to be of equal importance.
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's Moomin books have been translated into 33 languages.
Although known first and foremost as an author, Tove Jansson considered her careers as author and painter to be of equal importance.
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's Moomin books have been translated into 33 languages.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,976 reviews
October 24, 2024
‘The forest was full of signs and portents, its own secret written language.’
Tove Jansson, the world-renowned creator of the Moomintroll characters, succinctly harnesses the power and glory of a seaside summer season in the twenty-two elegant vignettes contained within The Summer Book. Here is a book in no need of magic or any other fantastical adornments as she reminds us that we can discover pure, beautiful magic in the natural world all around us if only we quiet our lives and open our eyes to it. Set upon a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland much like where Jansson’s own family spent their summers, Summer Book chronicles the interactions and adventures between a young girl, Sophia, and her grandmother as they embrace the world and all the facts of life that surround them. Tender and subtle, yet laced with poignant investigations of life, love and death, Jansson’s words caress the soul like a warm breeze carrying with it the effluvium of the sea and all its majesty.
The childhood vacation home of Tove Jansson
The Summer Book is a book where almost nothing happens, yet everything happens. It is a quiet little book that that only hints at the powerful undercurrents that charge the events that transpire. Each vignette details what initially appears to be seemingly inconspicuous moments in the lives of young Sophia and her grandmother, yet unveil guideposts leading to deeply penetrating insights into the human condition, much like the wooden animal figurines created by the grandmother.
There is only one major event that directs the course of the action: ‘Sophia woke up and remembered that they had come back to the island and that she had a bed to herself because her mother was dead.’ This is the only mention of Sophia’s tragic loss, and while it sits hushed in the peripheries of the margins, it casts an omnipresent shadow that is always lurking in the back of the reader’s mind. Jansson wrote this book a year after loosing her own mother. After witnessing a worm cut in two and learning that both halves will continue on, Sophia dictates a study on worms to the grandmother in which she say ‘They realized that from now on life would be quite different, but they didn’t know how, that is, in what way.’ Sophia must live her life without her ‘other half’, not knowing how it is affecting her, but only knowing that it is affecting her. Amidst the joyful effervescence of summer are the grim realities of mortal lives that must interact with one another. Jansson does not depict a world full of eternal sunshine and happiness, but one where the sky may break into a furious storm at any moment to rattle us like a house being tugged from its foundation in gale force winds. ‘’It’s funny about me,’ Sophia said. ‘I think nice weather gets to be boring.’’ Once again managing to avoid being overly sweet, Jansson creates a cast of flawed, yet very human, characters. Sophia often flies into an angry rage, often irritated that the world doesn’t fit her idea of how it should be, and has a fierce need to test boundaries and assert her independence and identity, whereas the grandmother is cantankerous and rather unsentimental. The two make a wonderfully comedic pair, bickering as equals and passing time together, being both too young and too old to partake in much of the activity around them—such as a booze-filled party on a boat the father leaves them for—and having to find ways to assert their existence in the world in spite of it all. Jansson illuminates a world that is indifferent and unsentimental, yet manages to create a passionate tenderness out of embracing reality as it is. We must make the best of the world we have and learn to love it if we are to find true happiness in our lives, and this book is a wonderful example of finding this love.
As the pair face the world, the readers are given small glimpses into their hearts and souls. Many of life’s big issues are addressed and handled with finesse, such as the way in which we love even what hurts us. Sophia is disgusted by her cat because it is a killer, always bringing dead mice to the door, and trades it for a different cat only to miss her original cat. ‘’It’ll be awful,’ said Sophia gravely. ‘But it’s Moppy I love.’’ A wide assortment of life’s toughest realities, all its joys and sorrows, are viewed through the innocence of a young girl finding her way in the wild, and the result is immensely moving. Nothing last forever, and our summer of childhood must come to an end. We must shoulder the cold of the world and move on into our seasons of adulthood, carrying with us the lessons we learned as wild-eyed children trying to decipher the mysterious signs of nature.
Each page of The Summer Book rolled across me in waves of nostalgia for idyllic childhood summers spent in a cabin rented by my parents on Sunset Lake in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. With each luminous description of the luscious landscapes I was transported back to the sights, sounds and smells of the waves, trees and summer air of my childhood and sat back in wonderment as I watched my memories play back images of my younger self encountering the mysteries of the world. This truly is a beautiful book that instilled an emotion in me so delicate and beautifully ineffable that I had to get sloppy drunk enough to have the audacity to tarnish it’s power by attempting to convey it through the dingy pipelines of my own words. This is a subtle little novel that immerses you into nature and reminds you that you are just a tiny dot in a vast universe. While nothing appears to be immediately meaningful, there is a vast depth to be uncovered if we just sit back, relax, and let ourselves be engulfed in Jansson’s prose. Which is much like the magic of the world around us. We miss so much if we rapidly hurtle through the world, trying to leave a mark upon it as we attempt to ensnare some sort of meaning that we can hold onto and bottle up in an airtight jar of our own identity. Instead, Jansson asks us to take the slow, scenic route, and transcend beyond our own identity, to become a small part of nature, a tiny part of something greater. There is where the true magic of existence is found, listening to the orchestra of nature all around us and seeing the power and beauty in the tiniest of interactions, in seeing each interaction with another consciousness as a gift in itself, and finding peace in our small corner of the world. Jansson expertly harnesses the aura of summer, and its nights that are, as Bruno Schulz once wrote, ‘as vast as the megalomanic aspirations of young lovers.’ This book is utterly cleansing to a weary heart, like a brilliant ray of sunshine through a dusty attic, and makes for a perfect summer get-away for readers of any age. This book makes me glad to be alive.
5/5
‘To the final landscape of our old age, as summer fades. This is a fine moment. Silences settles all around us, each of us wanders his own way, and we all meet by the sea in the peaceful sunset.’
Tove Jansson, the world-renowned creator of the Moomintroll characters, succinctly harnesses the power and glory of a seaside summer season in the twenty-two elegant vignettes contained within The Summer Book. Here is a book in no need of magic or any other fantastical adornments as she reminds us that we can discover pure, beautiful magic in the natural world all around us if only we quiet our lives and open our eyes to it. Set upon a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland much like where Jansson’s own family spent their summers, Summer Book chronicles the interactions and adventures between a young girl, Sophia, and her grandmother as they embrace the world and all the facts of life that surround them. Tender and subtle, yet laced with poignant investigations of life, love and death, Jansson’s words caress the soul like a warm breeze carrying with it the effluvium of the sea and all its majesty.
The childhood vacation home of Tove Jansson
The Summer Book is a book where almost nothing happens, yet everything happens. It is a quiet little book that that only hints at the powerful undercurrents that charge the events that transpire. Each vignette details what initially appears to be seemingly inconspicuous moments in the lives of young Sophia and her grandmother, yet unveil guideposts leading to deeply penetrating insights into the human condition, much like the wooden animal figurines created by the grandmother.
She cut the them from branches and driftwood and gave them paws and faces, but she only hinted at what they looked like and never made them too distinct. They retained their wooden souls, and the curve of their backs and legs had the enigmatic shape of growth itself and remained a part of the decaying forest... Grandmother worked only in old wood that had already found its form. That is, she saw and selected those pieces of wood that expressed what she wanted them to say.Jansson doesn’t force meaning or preach morality, she simply selects sublime moments of human interaction and lets them point towards something far greater. In this manner, Jansson avoids the pitfalls of choking the reader in oversentimentality and soars to great heights of succinct poetic grace. Accompanying her awe-inspiring words are her gorgeous illustrations, which make a perfect match by being both simple, yet magnificent.
An island can be dreadful to someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure, and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, ad at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.Each vignette is as self-contained as an island, with one event gesturing towards one idea, and then never returned to again, much like children’s cartoons where each episode is irrelevant from the next, which only furthers the glorious childlike feelings that emanate from each page. There is no need to establish a time-line—the months moving back and forth across the summer season may imply that it occurs over several different summers, yet there is no indication which summer it is or if Sophia has aged—or for events to be considered in light of later events. It is a blur of summer grandeur. Nothing really progresses, yet nothing really has to because The Summer Book is a vacation from the stresses and hustle of life. It moves to the gentle rhythm of a bobbing sea quietly breaking on shore as you read in the long grass beneath a sweltering sun.
There is only one major event that directs the course of the action: ‘Sophia woke up and remembered that they had come back to the island and that she had a bed to herself because her mother was dead.’ This is the only mention of Sophia’s tragic loss, and while it sits hushed in the peripheries of the margins, it casts an omnipresent shadow that is always lurking in the back of the reader’s mind. Jansson wrote this book a year after loosing her own mother. After witnessing a worm cut in two and learning that both halves will continue on, Sophia dictates a study on worms to the grandmother in which she say ‘They realized that from now on life would be quite different, but they didn’t know how, that is, in what way.’ Sophia must live her life without her ‘other half’, not knowing how it is affecting her, but only knowing that it is affecting her. Amidst the joyful effervescence of summer are the grim realities of mortal lives that must interact with one another. Jansson does not depict a world full of eternal sunshine and happiness, but one where the sky may break into a furious storm at any moment to rattle us like a house being tugged from its foundation in gale force winds. ‘’It’s funny about me,’ Sophia said. ‘I think nice weather gets to be boring.’’ Once again managing to avoid being overly sweet, Jansson creates a cast of flawed, yet very human, characters. Sophia often flies into an angry rage, often irritated that the world doesn’t fit her idea of how it should be, and has a fierce need to test boundaries and assert her independence and identity, whereas the grandmother is cantankerous and rather unsentimental. The two make a wonderfully comedic pair, bickering as equals and passing time together, being both too young and too old to partake in much of the activity around them—such as a booze-filled party on a boat the father leaves them for—and having to find ways to assert their existence in the world in spite of it all. Jansson illuminates a world that is indifferent and unsentimental, yet manages to create a passionate tenderness out of embracing reality as it is. We must make the best of the world we have and learn to love it if we are to find true happiness in our lives, and this book is a wonderful example of finding this love.
As the pair face the world, the readers are given small glimpses into their hearts and souls. Many of life’s big issues are addressed and handled with finesse, such as the way in which we love even what hurts us. Sophia is disgusted by her cat because it is a killer, always bringing dead mice to the door, and trades it for a different cat only to miss her original cat. ‘’It’ll be awful,’ said Sophia gravely. ‘But it’s Moppy I love.’’ A wide assortment of life’s toughest realities, all its joys and sorrows, are viewed through the innocence of a young girl finding her way in the wild, and the result is immensely moving. Nothing last forever, and our summer of childhood must come to an end. We must shoulder the cold of the world and move on into our seasons of adulthood, carrying with us the lessons we learned as wild-eyed children trying to decipher the mysterious signs of nature.
Each page of The Summer Book rolled across me in waves of nostalgia for idyllic childhood summers spent in a cabin rented by my parents on Sunset Lake in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. With each luminous description of the luscious landscapes I was transported back to the sights, sounds and smells of the waves, trees and summer air of my childhood and sat back in wonderment as I watched my memories play back images of my younger self encountering the mysteries of the world. This truly is a beautiful book that instilled an emotion in me so delicate and beautifully ineffable that I had to get sloppy drunk enough to have the audacity to tarnish it’s power by attempting to convey it through the dingy pipelines of my own words. This is a subtle little novel that immerses you into nature and reminds you that you are just a tiny dot in a vast universe. While nothing appears to be immediately meaningful, there is a vast depth to be uncovered if we just sit back, relax, and let ourselves be engulfed in Jansson’s prose. Which is much like the magic of the world around us. We miss so much if we rapidly hurtle through the world, trying to leave a mark upon it as we attempt to ensnare some sort of meaning that we can hold onto and bottle up in an airtight jar of our own identity. Instead, Jansson asks us to take the slow, scenic route, and transcend beyond our own identity, to become a small part of nature, a tiny part of something greater. There is where the true magic of existence is found, listening to the orchestra of nature all around us and seeing the power and beauty in the tiniest of interactions, in seeing each interaction with another consciousness as a gift in itself, and finding peace in our small corner of the world. Jansson expertly harnesses the aura of summer, and its nights that are, as Bruno Schulz once wrote, ‘as vast as the megalomanic aspirations of young lovers.’ This book is utterly cleansing to a weary heart, like a brilliant ray of sunshine through a dusty attic, and makes for a perfect summer get-away for readers of any age. This book makes me glad to be alive.
5/5
‘To the final landscape of our old age, as summer fades. This is a fine moment. Silences settles all around us, each of us wanders his own way, and we all meet by the sea in the peaceful sunset.’
December 4, 2013
This is the quietest great book I've ever read.
Every once in a while I read a book that makes me jealous, that makes me wish I could write and do what the book did. Like this one. It's a wisp of a book - brief, with no plot to speak of and only two real characters, no compelling crisis to drive the action, no suspense.
I almost cried when it ended.
It's like a watercolor of only four or five easy strokes, that you can't help but stare at for hours.
Yeah.
So, this girl Sophia and her grandmother, and by the way, her dad is there too but in Sophia's world he's just a background force, like the weather, and not a character. This girl Sophia and her grandmother do not do much, but spend lots of time together doing normal things on normal summer days that happen in no particular order, and I don't even think all the same year.
And it's just wonderful.
If you've ever read the Moomintroll books, this book has the same breezy disarming sense of humor.
I bet Tove Jansson could have written this review in 12 words, and it would have been better.
Every once in a while I read a book that makes me jealous, that makes me wish I could write and do what the book did. Like this one. It's a wisp of a book - brief, with no plot to speak of and only two real characters, no compelling crisis to drive the action, no suspense.
I almost cried when it ended.
It's like a watercolor of only four or five easy strokes, that you can't help but stare at for hours.
Yeah.
So, this girl Sophia and her grandmother, and by the way, her dad is there too but in Sophia's world he's just a background force, like the weather, and not a character. This girl Sophia and her grandmother do not do much, but spend lots of time together doing normal things on normal summer days that happen in no particular order, and I don't even think all the same year.
And it's just wonderful.
If you've ever read the Moomintroll books, this book has the same breezy disarming sense of humor.
I bet Tove Jansson could have written this review in 12 words, and it would have been better.
January 26, 2024
This book is beautiful, enchanting, miraculous, magical.
https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...
The writing is lovely. The characters are charming and real. The stories give an immersive look at the as-yet-otherwise-unknown-to-me experience of a Scandinavian summer that feels totally new, and simultaneously gives a look at a childhood summer that is so familiar and comfortable and nostalgic.
It's a dream. That's all.
Bottom line: I don't intend to let another summer go by without me reading this book during it.
------------
pre-review
saw this one coming from a mile away.
review to come / 5 stars
------------
currently-reading updates
have you ever picked up a book and instantly known it was exactly what you needed it to be?
huge 5 star energy from the first page
https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...
The writing is lovely. The characters are charming and real. The stories give an immersive look at the as-yet-otherwise-unknown-to-me experience of a Scandinavian summer that feels totally new, and simultaneously gives a look at a childhood summer that is so familiar and comfortable and nostalgic.
It's a dream. That's all.
Bottom line: I don't intend to let another summer go by without me reading this book during it.
------------
pre-review
saw this one coming from a mile away.
review to come / 5 stars
------------
currently-reading updates
have you ever picked up a book and instantly known it was exactly what you needed it to be?
huge 5 star energy from the first page
October 21, 2022
I read a good portion of this Scandinavian classic as Hurricane Ian hurled heavy branches at our house and tangled himself up in the arms of the city's power lines, knocking out our electricity for hours.
It was perfect, actually, as this is a story about wildness, both the wildness of living on a small island in the Gulf of Finland and the wildness of living with fewer social conventions and conveniences.
I am drawn, always, to stories set in wild locales, especially beaches, and it's part of the reason why “Cast Away” is one of my favorite films of all time and why “Jimmy” from Ms. Atwood's Oryx and Crake is a literary love of mine. (Jimmy may be homeless after the Apocalypse, but he holds the appeal of the original Adam, and how's about that beachfront property?).
I love wild settings, and I adore wild characters, and Grandmother's as wild as they make 'em. She's a queen, a crone, a woman who has outlived her husband and her son's wife and has “reached the age where a person can safely be truthful” about certain things. (And she says them).
Grandmother takes cigarette breaks to keep her chatty granddaughter, Sophia, at bay, and she favors crawling, on all fours, when her dizziness is bad.
Sometimes Grandmother tells bold-faced lies and sometimes her granddaughter sticks letters under her door: “I hate you. With warm personal wishes, Sophia.”
There's a father in the story, though he never bores us with anything he has to say, and a sexy, loner neighbor named Eriksson who I hoped to God looked like this:
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.
I could read this story forever. I could easily make it an annual tradition to read it every summer.
I was ready to move in with the family and spend the second half of my life on their blustery, small island filled with quirky, faraway neighbors and weird wood carvings of animals.
None of this could ever grow old for me.
It was perfect, actually, as this is a story about wildness, both the wildness of living on a small island in the Gulf of Finland and the wildness of living with fewer social conventions and conveniences.
I am drawn, always, to stories set in wild locales, especially beaches, and it's part of the reason why “Cast Away” is one of my favorite films of all time and why “Jimmy” from Ms. Atwood's Oryx and Crake is a literary love of mine. (Jimmy may be homeless after the Apocalypse, but he holds the appeal of the original Adam, and how's about that beachfront property?).
I love wild settings, and I adore wild characters, and Grandmother's as wild as they make 'em. She's a queen, a crone, a woman who has outlived her husband and her son's wife and has “reached the age where a person can safely be truthful” about certain things. (And she says them).
Grandmother takes cigarette breaks to keep her chatty granddaughter, Sophia, at bay, and she favors crawling, on all fours, when her dizziness is bad.
Sometimes Grandmother tells bold-faced lies and sometimes her granddaughter sticks letters under her door: “I hate you. With warm personal wishes, Sophia.”
There's a father in the story, though he never bores us with anything he has to say, and a sexy, loner neighbor named Eriksson who I hoped to God looked like this:
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.
I could read this story forever. I could easily make it an annual tradition to read it every summer.
I was ready to move in with the family and spend the second half of my life on their blustery, small island filled with quirky, faraway neighbors and weird wood carvings of animals.
None of this could ever grow old for me.
February 25, 2019
Why do only the very very young or the very very old have time to ponder what heaven is like? Or to bask in the simple act of diving? Or to invent stories about mice and worms and write a novel about a day in their animal lives?
Maybe because grandmothers are the only people in the world capable of educating using the art of playing and granddaughters are the only ones ready to play with grandmothers seriously.
This is, in short, what Tove Jansson portrays in The Summer Book, a summer that is not Mediterranean, and a book that is not only for children but rather for those of all ages who still see the world as a place full of potential wonder and adventure.
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 abrupt landscape and the peaceful solitude of the island play a protagonist role in the story, framing the conversations between grandmother and granddaughter with the eeriness and depth that only the Nordic scenery can provide.
An island is one of the few places on earth where it is possible to create your own world, and Jansson manages to build a small universe where old and young, danger and beauty, real life and imagination coexist in perfect balance, feeding on each other’s experiences, making everything new yet cosily familiar at the same time to the astonished reader.
Passing on the baton to our children seems like an obvious idea, but Jansson’s depiction of the magic bond that can be developed between the elderly and children is nothing short of a miracle, a gem to be treasured, nurtured and understood as one of those important things that give meaning and purpose to life.
Grandmothers are, after all, like fairy Godmothers, they can beat bad luck, superstition and even death; everything fits in their pockets because they fight back with the invincible weapons of wisdom, patience and unreserved love.
And who can beat something like that?
Maybe because grandmothers are the only people in the world capable of educating using the art of playing and granddaughters are the only ones ready to play with grandmothers seriously.
This is, in short, what Tove Jansson portrays in The Summer Book, a summer that is not Mediterranean, and a book that is not only for children but rather for those of all ages who still see the world as a place full of potential wonder and adventure.
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 abrupt landscape and the peaceful solitude of the island play a protagonist role in the story, framing the conversations between grandmother and granddaughter with the eeriness and depth that only the Nordic scenery can provide.
An island is one of the few places on earth where it is possible to create your own world, and Jansson manages to build a small universe where old and young, danger and beauty, real life and imagination coexist in perfect balance, feeding on each other’s experiences, making everything new yet cosily familiar at the same time to the astonished reader.
Passing on the baton to our children seems like an obvious idea, but Jansson’s depiction of the magic bond that can be developed between the elderly and children is nothing short of a miracle, a gem to be treasured, nurtured and understood as one of those important things that give meaning and purpose to life.
Grandmothers are, after all, like fairy Godmothers, they can beat bad luck, superstition and even death; everything fits in their pockets because they fight back with the invincible weapons of wisdom, patience and unreserved love.
And who can beat something like that?
April 19, 2022
There’s something magical about the bond between the young and the old. I can’t imagine a more enchanting place to tell such a story than on a mysterious island. An island takes note of the seasons and the shifts in weather more clearly than perhaps any other place on earth. The new growth, the budding of the flowers, and the arrival of the birds are just as distinct as the withering of the leaves or the ravages left behind by a storm at sea. It’s not long before everything is renewed once again. The old can nourish the new, but the old growth can be revitalized by the new a bit as well, can’t it?! One summer (or what felt like a series of summers, perhaps), little Sophia and Grandmother rely on one another and learn from each other in this beautifully written novel. It also provides a generous dose of nostalgia for anyone that fondly recalls a treasured relationship with a special, older person that seemed to carry around a pocketful of wisdom.
“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.”
Grandmother is getting up there in years, sometimes forgetting things, but still managing to take risks and find adventures. Sophia looks up to her, but at the same time is gaining her own sense of independence. They make up stories and create their own little worlds made of the things the island provides – mud, wood, and rocks. Every now and then a visitor claims a little more space, only to disappear over the horizon once again. Father is there as well, but he is merely a shadow, usually working the day away in the other room. Like many small children, Sophia begins to ask those unanswerable questions about death. She’s lost her mother before this story begins, so death is not new, yet it still remains a mystery. Grandmother does her best to address these queries. All the while the reader senses a bit of melancholy humming below the surface, as the seeds of Grandmother’s own mortality are sown as well. A strain is placed on the relationship as both struggle to determine how to “be” for one another.
“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.”
This was a perfect book for me at a hectic time. It forces one to slow down. No matter what happens, life does change just like the seasons, but each one brings something new to contemplate. We can look at it in the same old way, or we can stop and see something fresh that we hadn’t noticed previously. We can keep learning if we choose to do so, giving and receiving from one another in the process. I urge you to pick this one up when you are in need of applying the brakes for a few days. Take a moment to stop for a breath – you won’t be sorry!
“Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realize that they had forgotten.”
“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.”
Grandmother is getting up there in years, sometimes forgetting things, but still managing to take risks and find adventures. Sophia looks up to her, but at the same time is gaining her own sense of independence. They make up stories and create their own little worlds made of the things the island provides – mud, wood, and rocks. Every now and then a visitor claims a little more space, only to disappear over the horizon once again. Father is there as well, but he is merely a shadow, usually working the day away in the other room. Like many small children, Sophia begins to ask those unanswerable questions about death. She’s lost her mother before this story begins, so death is not new, yet it still remains a mystery. Grandmother does her best to address these queries. All the while the reader senses a bit of melancholy humming below the surface, as the seeds of Grandmother’s own mortality are sown as well. A strain is placed on the relationship as both struggle to determine how to “be” for one another.
“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.”
This was a perfect book for me at a hectic time. It forces one to slow down. No matter what happens, life does change just like the seasons, but each one brings something new to contemplate. We can look at it in the same old way, or we can stop and see something fresh that we hadn’t noticed previously. We can keep learning if we choose to do so, giving and receiving from one another in the process. I urge you to pick this one up when you are in need of applying the brakes for a few days. Take a moment to stop for a breath – you won’t be sorry!
“Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realize that they had forgotten.”
February 26, 2022
قرأت هذا الكتاب في ثلاثة أيام، هي في الحقيقة ثلاث جُمع، ربما بسبب تأثيره الحلميّ والمهدئ الذي جعلني أدخره للإجازات.
هذا كتابٌ لطيف عن اللطف، كتاب آخر أحبه.
هذا كتابٌ لطيف عن اللطف، كتاب آخر أحبه.
August 17, 2014
As luck would have it, there was a Tove Jansson exhibition on at the Helsinki Ateneum while I was in town – August marks the centenary of her birth. (It's still strange to me to realise that a hundred years ago is only the twentieth century now. To me, ‘last century’ still suggests Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy.) Amidst all the seascapes, moody self-portraits and Moomin sketches, I was fascinated by a video exhibit that showed a loop of grainy home-movie footage: Tove and her partner Tuulikki Pietilä on their island in the Pellinkis, laughing in the sun, wearing baggy knitted jumpers, and looking – as people always do in grainy home-movie footage – especially dead.
In some ways death is the central theme of this book, but to say so gives entirely the wrong impression – it is light, charming, funny, enriching, very alive, not remotely morbid or depressing. The island where it's set is not quite the one from the home movies, but it's very nearby. Much of the flora and fauna – bird-cherry trees, long-tailed ducks – are also common in the Kalevala, and consequently these species now seem to me, rightly or wrongly, to be archetypally Finnish. Anyway, this small rural island provides a closed (literally insular) world within which our two characters – little Sophia and Grandmother, only ever so called – can talk, play, learn. This could so easily be twee or trite (ha ha, kids say the funniest things and old folks have lots of homespun wisdom to impart) but it's not, it's brilliant. I believed every word. The chapters are independent anecdotes which blend into each other in the way that summer days do when you're very young.
I find this sort of writing – which has no real plot but is all about exploring characters – very hard to do and I am always lost in admiration when I see it done well. Sophia and Grandmother strike me as absolutely real, but even the cameos are brilliantly described – Jansson has a real flair for these thumbnail character sketches, unusual and specific:
Eriksson was small and strong and the colour of the landscape, except that his eyes were blue. When people talked about him or thought about him, it seemed natural to lift their heads and gaze out over the sea […. A]s long as he stayed, he had everyone's undivided attention. No one did anything, no one looked at anything but Eriksson. They would hang on his every word, and when he was gone and nothing had actually been said, their thoughts would dwell gravely on what he had left unspoken.
Sophia's endearing curiosity and strong-mindedness, her grandmother's no-nonsense brand of wisdom, are things that readers will have to discover for themselves, resistant as they are to being captured in quotations. One of my favourite chapters was the one where Grandmother was visited by an old friend, and we see her for the first time away from Sophia and talking to another grown-up: we realise that talking to adults requires just as much care and dissembling as talking to children.
Suddenly he burst out, ‘And now Backmansson is gone.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘He is no longer among us,’ Verner explained angrily.
‘Oh, you mean he's dead,’ said Grandmother. She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either too young or too old, or else they didn't have time.
Jansson manages to have her cake and eat it too. She allows us to enjoy Grandmother, in all her magisterial forthrightness; but she herself as a writer is anything but blunt. She is subtle, and the book's themes accumulate gradually while you're concentrating on something else.
It has to be said too that the (American-) English translation from Thomas Teal is outstanding, almost flawless. Sort Of Books, who reprinted this in Britain, went on to commission translations of all Jansson's other fiction for adults, including more from Teal once they'd tracked him down (he produced The Summer Book in the 1970s, and temporarily retired from translating soon after to concentrate on speechwriting). Sort Of also paid him accumulated royalties even though he didn't own any of the copyright – he tells the story here, and it's likely to endear you to this very small publishing house, which only releases two or three books a year.
This and the NYRB edition also include an introduction from Esther Freud (with whose Hideous Kinky I now see many connections), in which she meets the real-life Sophia, who is now of course a grown woman. The very idea of this is heartbreaking to me – but then that's one of the lessons this book teaches you so painlessly, like the deliciously sugared pill it is, allowing you to smile honestly even as you watch Super-8 footage of someone turning to the camera on a beach sixty years ago, desaturated, a little jerky, laughing over and over again as the tape loops round.
February 10, 2024
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: 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 existence, 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 of 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 life.
Tove Jansson, whose Moomintroll comic strip and books brought her international acclaim, lived for much of her life on an island like the one described in The Summer Book, and the work can be enjoyed as her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.
The Summer Book is translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal.
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.
The Summer Book is, in contrast, the quietest reading imaginable. Yes, there are storms...an island will experience a lot of those...there are misfit neighbors in ugly houses, and all of it is so much the proper order of things that they fail to create fear in the reader. The two or three hours you'll spend with this family as its members learn to grow, learn to let go, and simply earn their living won't be wasted.
I'd strongly suggest this as a midafternoon sunny-day read, or the quiet and the rightness of story and style will lull the tense, stressed, relaxation-deprived modern person into a deep, satisfying sleep.
The Publisher Says: 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 existence, 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 of 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 life.
Tove Jansson, whose Moomintroll comic strip and books brought her international acclaim, lived for much of her life on an island like the one described in The Summer Book, and the work can be enjoyed as her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.
The Summer Book is translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal.
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.
The Summer Book is, in contrast, the quietest reading imaginable. Yes, there are storms...an island will experience a lot of those...there are misfit neighbors in ugly houses, and all of it is so much the proper order of things that they fail to create fear in the reader. The two or three hours you'll spend with this family as its members learn to grow, learn to let go, and simply earn their living won't be wasted.
I'd strongly suggest this as a midafternoon sunny-day read, or the quiet and the rightness of story and style will lull the tense, stressed, relaxation-deprived modern person into a deep, satisfying sleep.
February 25, 2022
4,5
Witty, funny, lovely, moving and a bit nostalgic for me...
A little girl with so many questions, an old lady with so much silent wisdom...
Witty, funny, lovely, moving and a bit nostalgic for me...
A little girl with so many questions, an old lady with so much silent wisdom...
January 12, 2024
-“It’s funny about love. The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.”
-“That’s very true. And so what do you do?”
-“You go on loving. You love harder and harder.”
The Summer Book centers on the relationship between the impetuous six year old Sophia and her shrewd and perceptive grandmother; the interaction between the two and their adventures on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland.
Every chapter in the book is a short story about an incident on the island.
The thing about God is that He usually does help, but not until you've made an effort on your own.
-“That’s very true. And so what do you do?”
-“You go on loving. You love harder and harder.”
The Summer Book centers on the relationship between the impetuous six year old Sophia and her shrewd and perceptive grandmother; the interaction between the two and their adventures on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland.
Every chapter in the book is a short story about an incident on the island.
The thing about God is that He usually does help, but not until you've made an effort on your own.
April 24, 2022
NOTES of INTEREST….
“Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was born in Helsinki into Finland‘s Swedish speaking minority. Her father was a sculptor and her mother a graphic designer and illustrator. Winters were spent in the family’s art-filled studio and summers in the fisherman’s cottage on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, a setting that would later figure in Jansson’s writing for adults and children. Jansson loved books as a child, and set out from an early age to be an artist; her first illustration was published when she was fifteen years old; four years later a picture book appeared under a pseudonym”.
Tove Jansson’s series of children’s books — about the Moomintroll and Moomin family —(books Jansson became famous for)….have been books on my (own) to be read list for awhile now —
The interruptions of constant news from a friend, authors, author-friends, Netgalley, and other email news from publishers — have often been reasons why I haven’t gotten to books on my own TBR list sooner —
The only way to stop this process… is to stop accepting advance readers —
I’ve tried to quit and or cut down on accepting advance ARC-books to review-
(thankfully with much success)…..dozens of times a month!!!
At this stage in my life — I prefer discussions with book friends over the phone - or best - in person - and/or through our private emails, texts, and message exchanges….( personal real enjoyment)!
Burn-out-fatigue has started showing up in my reading, writing reviews, “great review”comments…..and feeling pulled in too many directions.
That said …. I picked this book out of pure ‘now’ desire. Selfish pleasure!!!
I’ve loved everything I’ve read and or seen about Tove Jansson for years!!!
The icing on the cake was Candi’s recent review of this book …..(wonderful and inspiring)….
I jumped in….
This is possibly my last full written review as a 69 year old.
I turn 70 next month…..and plan to ‘cut back’ all online participation.
This is a treasure of a slim book!!!
*An island* — *summers* — “are often described as being impossible to categorize or describe, as if to suggest that they defy not only human powers of speech but also, obstinately, comprehension”.
“‘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”.
Tove Jansson was almost sixty when she wrote The Summer Book. She was old enough to be a grandmother, but of course she was also a daughter, and one who had just lost her mother, a condition mirrored in the books unusual point of view, which hovers above and around the island and seems not so much to move from grandmother to granddaughter as to share them, inhibiting both sensitivities in a manner of weather. There is nothing sentimental about this world. Like the weather, this world asks only to be acknowledge.
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”.
In the first chapter, Tove has written a book on the advice of her grandmother about Angleworms that have come apart. The worm knows that if it comes apart, both halves start growing separately.
“This isn’t a book in which miracles occur, and less you take into account the sleight of hand Jansson’s achieves with point of view”.
“The subject is death, the death of the mother, that beloved”.
—-Kathryn Davis wrote the introduction.
It’s clear to me that this novel between a grandmother and a granddaughter….was very personal to Tove Jansson.
At times you’re not sure which one is really the child….
But the unique-closeness they shared had something to do with ‘quantity’ time, close proximity, the ‘day-to-day’ interaction with each other.
Grandmother‘s world was shrinking—Sophia’s world was stretching. The space between them became the larger space between both of their lives.
“Are you married? Sophia cried and great astonishment”
“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’”.
“I don’t think so, said Sophia amiably. I’m kind of busy right now”.
“Sophia! Grandmother called. ‘My stick pill down in the pool and I can’t walk’. She waited and then called again.‘It’s bloody awful, do you hear me? My balance is bloody awful today, and I’ve got to have my cane!’”
“Sophia started down. She moved steadily, one step at a time”.
“Damned child Grandmother thought. Confounded children. But that’s what happens when people won’t let you do anything fun. The people who are old enough”.
“Sophia was back down on the rock. She waited out into the pool for the stick and handed it to Grandmother without looking at her”.
“A very long time ago, Grandmother had wanted to tell about all the things they did, but no one had bothered to ask. And now she had lost the urge”.
This next excerpt is in Candi’s review, too….
but it’s so powerful- speaks to me profoundly—
I’m including it in my review as well:
“Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realize that they had forgotten”.
Small islands….
….in the ocean…
Turf instead of soil. Seaweed, sand, bird droppings, flowers in every crack in the granite, bright colors everywhere, children playing, pulling weeds, splashing, collecting wild seeds, ordinary days, family boats, tents, mice, snow, wind, rain, storms, heat, frost, fire, sandwiches, crooks eating crayfish, sunrises, moonlights, spring, Angleworms, caterpillars, spiders, tadpoles, beetles and other creatures, summers….
Grandmother, a child, a family, friends, uncertainty, silence, faint music, earth,
Fur and Feathers forever…God, death, love.
Perfect!
“Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was born in Helsinki into Finland‘s Swedish speaking minority. Her father was a sculptor and her mother a graphic designer and illustrator. Winters were spent in the family’s art-filled studio and summers in the fisherman’s cottage on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, a setting that would later figure in Jansson’s writing for adults and children. Jansson loved books as a child, and set out from an early age to be an artist; her first illustration was published when she was fifteen years old; four years later a picture book appeared under a pseudonym”.
Tove Jansson’s series of children’s books — about the Moomintroll and Moomin family —(books Jansson became famous for)….have been books on my (own) to be read list for awhile now —
The interruptions of constant news from a friend, authors, author-friends, Netgalley, and other email news from publishers — have often been reasons why I haven’t gotten to books on my own TBR list sooner —
The only way to stop this process… is to stop accepting advance readers —
I’ve tried to quit and or cut down on accepting advance ARC-books to review-
(thankfully with much success)…..dozens of times a month!!!
At this stage in my life — I prefer discussions with book friends over the phone - or best - in person - and/or through our private emails, texts, and message exchanges….( personal real enjoyment)!
Burn-out-fatigue has started showing up in my reading, writing reviews, “great review”comments…..and feeling pulled in too many directions.
That said …. I picked this book out of pure ‘now’ desire. Selfish pleasure!!!
I’ve loved everything I’ve read and or seen about Tove Jansson for years!!!
The icing on the cake was Candi’s recent review of this book …..(wonderful and inspiring)….
I jumped in….
This is possibly my last full written review as a 69 year old.
I turn 70 next month…..and plan to ‘cut back’ all online participation.
This is a treasure of a slim book!!!
*An island* — *summers* — “are often described as being impossible to categorize or describe, as if to suggest that they defy not only human powers of speech but also, obstinately, comprehension”.
“‘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”.
Tove Jansson was almost sixty when she wrote The Summer Book. She was old enough to be a grandmother, but of course she was also a daughter, and one who had just lost her mother, a condition mirrored in the books unusual point of view, which hovers above and around the island and seems not so much to move from grandmother to granddaughter as to share them, inhibiting both sensitivities in a manner of weather. There is nothing sentimental about this world. Like the weather, this world asks only to be acknowledge.
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”.
In the first chapter, Tove has written a book on the advice of her grandmother about Angleworms that have come apart. The worm knows that if it comes apart, both halves start growing separately.
“This isn’t a book in which miracles occur, and less you take into account the sleight of hand Jansson’s achieves with point of view”.
“The subject is death, the death of the mother, that beloved”.
—-Kathryn Davis wrote the introduction.
It’s clear to me that this novel between a grandmother and a granddaughter….was very personal to Tove Jansson.
At times you’re not sure which one is really the child….
But the unique-closeness they shared had something to do with ‘quantity’ time, close proximity, the ‘day-to-day’ interaction with each other.
Grandmother‘s world was shrinking—Sophia’s world was stretching. The space between them became the larger space between both of their lives.
“Are you married? Sophia cried and great astonishment”
“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’”.
“I don’t think so, said Sophia amiably. I’m kind of busy right now”.
“Sophia! Grandmother called. ‘My stick pill down in the pool and I can’t walk’. She waited and then called again.‘It’s bloody awful, do you hear me? My balance is bloody awful today, and I’ve got to have my cane!’”
“Sophia started down. She moved steadily, one step at a time”.
“Damned child Grandmother thought. Confounded children. But that’s what happens when people won’t let you do anything fun. The people who are old enough”.
“Sophia was back down on the rock. She waited out into the pool for the stick and handed it to Grandmother without looking at her”.
“A very long time ago, Grandmother had wanted to tell about all the things they did, but no one had bothered to ask. And now she had lost the urge”.
This next excerpt is in Candi’s review, too….
but it’s so powerful- speaks to me profoundly—
I’m including it in my review as well:
“Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realize that they had forgotten”.
Small islands….
….in the ocean…
Turf instead of soil. Seaweed, sand, bird droppings, flowers in every crack in the granite, bright colors everywhere, children playing, pulling weeds, splashing, collecting wild seeds, ordinary days, family boats, tents, mice, snow, wind, rain, storms, heat, frost, fire, sandwiches, crooks eating crayfish, sunrises, moonlights, spring, Angleworms, caterpillars, spiders, tadpoles, beetles and other creatures, summers….
Grandmother, a child, a family, friends, uncertainty, silence, faint music, earth,
Fur and Feathers forever…God, death, love.
Perfect!
May 5, 2019
Totally charming and remarkably deep little book - makes for a very happy afternoon. Jannson's talent shines through in her depiction of both the old and the young. The Grandmother and Sophia have much in common and the novel is revelation on how to write different ages with honesty and clarity. It's such a lean thing that it's not particularly worth pulling out individual episodes, but there are a couple of moments (Sophia's book on worms, a thwarted party) that will stick with me. Gorgeous descriptions. A wonderful consistency in usage of words like "nice" and "pretty," words that should be used more often.
If I had to describe it, I would say that it's sort of the spiritual link between Sei Shonagon and Lydia Davis.
If I had to describe it, I would say that it's sort of the spiritual link between Sei Shonagon and Lydia Davis.
October 24, 2024
I had to buy the Greek translation of this book the minute I spotted it on the display counter of the small bookshop, on the quay of the Aegean island where I was waiting for the ferry back to Athens. In the blinding brightness of a Mediterranean August, the cover image of a green island floating in the coolness of Finnish archipelago seemed like the ideal respite for my overheated brain. It ended up offering a lot more.
It gave me six-year-old Sophia, who’s delightfully opinionated for her age, and worthy of her name (Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom.) It also gave me her nameless, lively, octogenarian grandmother, whose restrained love and worry for her granddaughter go hand in hand with her apprehension of her own frailty and the melancholy of an impending end. Death makes an appearance on page two already, when the child outright asks her grandma “When are you going to die?”, only to get the equally straightforward reply “Soon. But that is not the least concern of yours.” At the end of the book the grandmother is storing away the things that need be ready for the following summer, but who knows if she’ll be around by then…
Those two are a rather odd pair of characters, whose idiosyncratic relationship defies stereotypes. Together they explore the island’s natural landscape and they ‘cure’ themselves through their inventive play. The grandmother has her own eccentric ways to assuage Sophia’s fears. She’s trying to answer her questions about life, death and God, and their frequent squabbles only strengthen their connection. She has her own fears to grapple with, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to help her granddaughter face life’s inevitable losses, big and small. The child’s mother has recently perished and although the subject is never directly addressed, her absence is haunting.
Fiction with lots of autobiographical, philosophical and humorous elements, this book is hard to categorize. Its chapters are vignettes of Nordic scenery more than they are traditional narrative parts; they form a larger canvas depicting the light of a summer dream, a dream that with each passing day marches towards the darkness of fall.
The timelessness of summers as they are experienced only by the very old and the very young. The short-lived harmony of the season. The distant, warm and flowing sense of days lived in a natural world where everything - creatures, plants, the weather - eventually find their rhythm and place: that is what the book has given me. It has been giving it to many, many readers all over the world ever since it was published in 1972; apparently its Scandinavian summer dream touches a universal memory - or fantasy.
I’m reading that in Sweden many people faithfully follow the ritual of reading it every summer and I’m thinking that is not at all a bad idea. Next year I’ll read it in June, when the end will be, comfortably, not yet in sight.
It gave me six-year-old Sophia, who’s delightfully opinionated for her age, and worthy of her name (Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom.) It also gave me her nameless, lively, octogenarian grandmother, whose restrained love and worry for her granddaughter go hand in hand with her apprehension of her own frailty and the melancholy of an impending end. Death makes an appearance on page two already, when the child outright asks her grandma “When are you going to die?”, only to get the equally straightforward reply “Soon. But that is not the least concern of yours.” At the end of the book the grandmother is storing away the things that need be ready for the following summer, but who knows if she’ll be around by then…
Those two are a rather odd pair of characters, whose idiosyncratic relationship defies stereotypes. Together they explore the island’s natural landscape and they ‘cure’ themselves through their inventive play. The grandmother has her own eccentric ways to assuage Sophia’s fears. She’s trying to answer her questions about life, death and God, and their frequent squabbles only strengthen their connection. She has her own fears to grapple with, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to help her granddaughter face life’s inevitable losses, big and small. The child’s mother has recently perished and although the subject is never directly addressed, her absence is haunting.
Fiction with lots of autobiographical, philosophical and humorous elements, this book is hard to categorize. Its chapters are vignettes of Nordic scenery more than they are traditional narrative parts; they form a larger canvas depicting the light of a summer dream, a dream that with each passing day marches towards the darkness of fall.
The timelessness of summers as they are experienced only by the very old and the very young. The short-lived harmony of the season. The distant, warm and flowing sense of days lived in a natural world where everything - creatures, plants, the weather - eventually find their rhythm and place: that is what the book has given me. It has been giving it to many, many readers all over the world ever since it was published in 1972; apparently its Scandinavian summer dream touches a universal memory - or fantasy.
I’m reading that in Sweden many people faithfully follow the ritual of reading it every summer and I’m thinking that is not at all a bad idea. Next year I’ll read it in June, when the end will be, comfortably, not yet in sight.
June 29, 2022
Perhaps children and the very elderly are closer to God, or at least closer to nature, because one is newly born and knows little and the other is near death and knows too much. While reading this sweet story of a grandmother and grandchild sharing their summer on a Finnish island, I kept thinking of them as opposite ends of a spectrum and yet as alike as two newly-minted pennies.
There is a kind of serene loveliness to this book, which is more a series of vignettes than an actual novel. It is summer and Sophia and her grandmother share adventures, break the rules, and befriend one another; one on a path of discovery and the other contemplating and sharing all the things she has gleaned over a lifetime. And, sometimes it is the young who have the wisdom.
It's funny about love', Sophia said. 'The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.'
'That's very true,' Grandmother observed. 'And so what do you do?'
'You go on loving,' said Sophia threateningly. 'You love harder and harder.
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.
We end the book with the first indicators that fall is approaching.
It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstill; nothing withers, and fall is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness.
And we know, if the child does not, that the summers of her grandmother are limit; she has already passed into the autumn of her life and winter is nipping at her heels. But what a blessed thing this time is for them both, for Grandmother has a chance to see the wonder that her life has been and Sophia is building memories that will someday stand in for this person she must surely lose.
This is not a melancholy book, but there is a trace of melancholy that runs beneath its surface, and a current of joy as well.
There is a kind of serene loveliness to this book, which is more a series of vignettes than an actual novel. It is summer and Sophia and her grandmother share adventures, break the rules, and befriend one another; one on a path of discovery and the other contemplating and sharing all the things she has gleaned over a lifetime. And, sometimes it is the young who have the wisdom.
It's funny about love', Sophia said. 'The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.'
'That's very true,' Grandmother observed. 'And so what do you do?'
'You go on loving,' said Sophia threateningly. 'You love harder and harder.
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.
We end the book with the first indicators that fall is approaching.
It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstill; nothing withers, and fall is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness.
And we know, if the child does not, that the summers of her grandmother are limit; she has already passed into the autumn of her life and winter is nipping at her heels. But what a blessed thing this time is for them both, for Grandmother has a chance to see the wonder that her life has been and Sophia is building memories that will someday stand in for this person she must surely lose.
This is not a melancholy book, but there is a trace of melancholy that runs beneath its surface, and a current of joy as well.
July 29, 2023
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.
Meanwhile there is the island and the sea, the tidal changes, the storms, everything that nature itself changes. The reader can sea the landscape in Jansson's words.
Recommended for those who like nature writing and stories of simple living.
Meanwhile there is the island and the sea, the tidal changes, the storms, everything that nature itself changes. The reader can sea the landscape in Jansson's words.
Recommended for those who like nature writing and stories of simple living.
Read
June 13, 2017 One tiny island in the gulf of Finland comes to represent a complete world full of miracle and mystery, safety and danger as we are swept happily along through the adventures of a feisty, indomitable little girl and her refreshingly different grandmother.
Read this perfect little book and better still, give it to everyone you know for Christmas.
Read this perfect little book and better still, give it to everyone you know for Christmas.
April 28, 2021
I'd temporarily put away The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson to get to other books and then this one arrived from the library. The character of Grandmother and the setting immediately called to mind Anderson and the tiny island of his nonfictional logs. Both Anderson and Grandmother live at times on an island where they are tolerant, though very wary, of outsiders. They find their place in the island world by observing the minutest of lives there, knowing they're just another small element. They are determined to become a part of its ecosystem without changing it, though they are too much of realists to know that doing so completely is possible. Neither is sentimental about the natural world, or really about anything. They are artists and create works, carved out of wood, that are ephemeral and that others will not necessarily see.
(Walter Anderson's Father Mississippi, carved from an oak tree that fell during a 1947 hurricane. It weathered away over the next ten years. Only the deer in the left foreground survived.)
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.
The heart of the book for me is the chapter called "Angleworms and Others." After being traumatized by accidentally cutting a worm in two with her spade, Sophia dictates a book to Grandmother:
Papa (Grandmother's son and Sophia's father) is in the background, usually "working" in his old robe, on the other side of the wall from whatever inside activity Grandmother and Sophia might be engaging in at the time -- right where Sophia likes him to be. She feels guilty (and scared) when she eats all the bread and he has to go out for supplies. While the three are relaxing on a distant skerry one August day, a storm for the ages blows in and the family takes refuge in an abandoned cottage. Inside, after stoking the stove, Papa "went back to his work," causing me to wonder what kind of work he does that could've been brought along with his fishing nets and their picnic basket. I also wondered if Papa had turned into a workaholic due to grief, though there's nothing in the text to support that. Grandmother and Sophia know, naturally, his role as the middle-aged in relation to the very old and the very young.
They [the carvings] retained their wooden souls, and the curve of their backs and legs had the enigmatic shape of growth itself and remained a part of the decaying forest... Grandmother worked only in old wood that had already found its form. That is, she saw and selected those pieces of wood that expressed what she wanted them to say.
(Walter Anderson's Father Mississippi, carved from an oak tree that fell during a 1947 hurricane. It weathered away over the next ten years. Only the deer in the left foreground survived.)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.
The heart of the book for me is the chapter called "Angleworms and Others." After being traumatized by accidentally cutting a worm in two with her spade, Sophia dictates a book to Grandmother:
They [the two halves of an angleworm] couldn't grow back together, because they were terribly upset, and...they didn't stop to think, either. And they knew that by and by they'd grow out again, both of them. I think they looked at each other, and thought they looked awful, and then crawled away from each other as fast as they could. Then they started to think. They realized that from now on life would be quite different, but they didn't know how, that is, in what way.
Papa (Grandmother's son and Sophia's father) is in the background, usually "working" in his old robe, on the other side of the wall from whatever inside activity Grandmother and Sophia might be engaging in at the time -- right where Sophia likes him to be. She feels guilty (and scared) when she eats all the bread and he has to go out for supplies. While the three are relaxing on a distant skerry one August day, a storm for the ages blows in and the family takes refuge in an abandoned cottage. Inside, after stoking the stove, Papa "went back to his work," causing me to wonder what kind of work he does that could've been brought along with his fishing nets and their picnic basket. I also wondered if Papa had turned into a workaholic due to grief, though there's nothing in the text to support that. Grandmother and Sophia know, naturally, his role as the middle-aged in relation to the very old and the very young.
January 23, 2015
I'm somewhat conflicted about this book. On the one hand, I immensely enjoyed the author's style of writing. It was beautiful, vivid, and perfectly descriptive without getting lost in details. I could imagine the island just like I was there. On the other hand, there wasn't a real plot to the book. The chapters seemed disjointed and random, and the characters were not very likeable. The father was mostly absent, the grandmother seemed borderline depressed and miserable, and Sophia? Oh Sophia. She was the brattiest, rudest, most easily loathable child I've read about it quite some time. She was bossy, rude, and disrespectful at every turn, and constantly would throw herself into screaming fits! Maybe it's because I'm very close with my Granny that this story just did not resound with me, but it definitely was not what I expected from the description.
July 3, 2022
This was such a nice quiet read. I very much liked the Grandmother and Sophia, her 6-year-old granddaughter. Sophia’s mother died and she lives with her father and her grandmother. The grandmother is not perfect...she shows strengths, weaknesses...she is getting up there in age and sometimes feels ill, and she smokes cigarettes. But she loves Sophia, and Sophia loves her. There are 23 ‘stories’ some of them two pages and most 3-5 pages.
My favorites were:
• The Pasture
• Playing Venice
• Dead Calm
• The Cat
• The Tent
• The Neighbor
• The Robe
• The Visitor
• Sophia’s Storm
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.
Here is a synopsis of the book copied from the back cover of my New York Review of Books edition:
• 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.
Reviews:
• By Ali Smith, noted novelist... https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
• https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/201...
• "(I)t manages to make you feel good as well as wise, without having to make too much effort. (...) This book is in danger of taking itself rather too seriously; there is a lot of home-spun philosophy but only rare flashes of humour, which nevertheless are very funny. But what makes The Summer Book rise above the realm of happy thoughts for grim times are the observations on being young and growing old: the girl's desperation not to appear frightened of deep water, her grandmother's determination not to let her see that she knew she was." - Dea Birkett, The Independent
• "Underlying all of this, and making the book cohere, is the subject, not of the microscopic world of the island or the ever-changing mood of the northern summer, but of death -- death awaited, death endured, death raged against and not understood." - Richard Rayner, The Los Angeles Times
• "Little happens. Major events on the surrounding seas -- the wreckage of a ship carrying a load of fireworks -- are described lightly, while minor details -- the texture of moss after it has been trodden on three times -- are observed with careful honesty. Yet the story clings onto the imagination like the trusting hand of a child, or the clutch of a dying woman, as the two characters stray into and out of life." - Jonathan Heawood, The Observer
My favorites were:
• The Pasture
• Playing Venice
• Dead Calm
• The Cat
• The Tent
• The Neighbor
• The Robe
• The Visitor
• Sophia’s Storm
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.
Here is a synopsis of the book copied from the back cover of my New York Review of Books edition:
• 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.
Reviews:
• By Ali Smith, noted novelist... https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
• https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/201...
• "(I)t manages to make you feel good as well as wise, without having to make too much effort. (...) This book is in danger of taking itself rather too seriously; there is a lot of home-spun philosophy but only rare flashes of humour, which nevertheless are very funny. But what makes The Summer Book rise above the realm of happy thoughts for grim times are the observations on being young and growing old: the girl's desperation not to appear frightened of deep water, her grandmother's determination not to let her see that she knew she was." - Dea Birkett, The Independent
• "Underlying all of this, and making the book cohere, is the subject, not of the microscopic world of the island or the ever-changing mood of the northern summer, but of death -- death awaited, death endured, death raged against and not understood." - Richard Rayner, The Los Angeles Times
• "Little happens. Major events on the surrounding seas -- the wreckage of a ship carrying a load of fireworks -- are described lightly, while minor details -- the texture of moss after it has been trodden on three times -- are observed with careful honesty. Yet the story clings onto the imagination like the trusting hand of a child, or the clutch of a dying woman, as the two characters stray into and out of life." - Jonathan Heawood, The Observer
February 15, 2021
4+
The Summer Book is a book you want to begin again upon finishing and not because anything about summer is appealing in the middle of February. It is the feeling of tranquility, the warmth of a relationship, the comfort of simple pleasures that calls you back.
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.
Summer ends and they must leave the island. There is no talk about next year. What matters is "the now". Written without embellishments, sentimentality nor promise, Jansson's book examines the magic of nature, both in its beauty and violence and the equally meaningful bond between a young child and an elderly grandmother; a life just beginning and one nearing the end.
The Summer Book is a book you want to begin again upon finishing and not because anything about summer is appealing in the middle of February. It is the feeling of tranquility, the warmth of a relationship, the comfort of simple pleasures that calls you back.
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.
Summer ends and they must leave the island. There is no talk about next year. What matters is "the now". Written without embellishments, sentimentality nor promise, Jansson's book examines the magic of nature, both in its beauty and violence and the equally meaningful bond between a young child and an elderly grandmother; a life just beginning and one nearing the end.
June 6, 2014
I'm sorry, Tove. It's not you, it's me. I was all set to love this book but found myself too impatient to read it at its own pace, to unpack its subtleties. Too often I found myself zoning out or when I thought I was all set for a prolonged engaged reading session suddenly I found myself more interested in looking at my phone. The episodic structure reminded me of Bruno Schulz's "The Streets of Crocodiles," with the crazy grandfather replaced by a sane grandmother, with everything throughout maybe a bit too sane for my tastes? The young girl's mother has died and everything's burdened with that action off-stage but despite admiration of stray images and entire vignettes ("The Cat" in particular) I found this too controlled for me maybe, the sort of thing that's described as "beautiful" but tends to bore me? Oh well. Maybe I'll come back to it some other time. Also, the title is misleading. It should be read on the first day of fall, after summer's over.
July 22, 2023
Tove Jansson’s episodic, slice-of-life novel manages to be charming without being precious. There’s an immense artistry and grace underlying its apparent simplicity but it’s also marvellously down to earth, tightly focused on the relationship between a grandmother and her granddaughter Sophia as they spend a summer together on a small Finnish island. The grandmother is in her eighties and Sophia only six but despite their vast age gap they’re an inseparable pair: swapping stories, playing games and sometimes engaging in heated disputes. Sophia’s mother has recently died, and Sophia's struggle with this loss surfaces throughout the book, sometimes in her dreams and sometimes in her reactions to incidents and objects that suggest threat or mortality. Yet this threat doesn’t dominate Jansson’s story which is packed with moments of unexpected comedy and wry observations.
Jansson’s portrayal of the island is striking, particularly her detailing of the natural world, the behaviour of birds, the trees, the landscapes. She’s also adept at conveying the pace and rhythm of island life with its well-honed routines and seasonal rituals - not surprising since it’s based on Klovharu a place she visited for over 30 years and where she built a summer cabin. In fact, the entire book is pervaded with echoes of Jansson’s own life, partly written as a response to her own grief after the death of her mother Signe (aka Ham) who serves as a model for the grandmother here – which perhaps explains why she’s never given a name – while Sophia is based on Jansson’s niece.
Sophia and her grandmother are not alone on the island, they’re accompanied by Sophia’s father who’s an intriguing figure. He’s always just out of frame, busy with work or some strange, obsessive project. It’s not clear if his behaviour reflects his reaction to his wife’s death or if Jansson is indirectly commenting on men and their interactions with women and with nature. Many of the men who appear in her story seem lacking in some sense or simply out of step with their environment: the father nearly destroys the surrounding vegetation when he imports exotic plants, diverting resources away from native varieties; a wealthy man builds an extravagant house close to the family’s cabin, an eyesore that disrupts the shoreline. Sometimes Jansson’s depiction of her male characters seems to anticipate elements of ecofeminism; just as other aspects of her story, especially her keen awareness of the fragility of wild things and the delicate balance required to sustain them, give this a distinctly eco-fictional flavour. I particularly relished her depiction of the grandmother which steers well clear of the many appalling stereotypes too often found in representations of elderly women. Jansson acknowledges the grandmother’s growing physical frailty but celebrates her rebellious spirit and her refusal to relinquish her sense of self or her independence. Translated by Thomas Teal.
Jansson’s portrayal of the island is striking, particularly her detailing of the natural world, the behaviour of birds, the trees, the landscapes. She’s also adept at conveying the pace and rhythm of island life with its well-honed routines and seasonal rituals - not surprising since it’s based on Klovharu a place she visited for over 30 years and where she built a summer cabin. In fact, the entire book is pervaded with echoes of Jansson’s own life, partly written as a response to her own grief after the death of her mother Signe (aka Ham) who serves as a model for the grandmother here – which perhaps explains why she’s never given a name – while Sophia is based on Jansson’s niece.
Sophia and her grandmother are not alone on the island, they’re accompanied by Sophia’s father who’s an intriguing figure. He’s always just out of frame, busy with work or some strange, obsessive project. It’s not clear if his behaviour reflects his reaction to his wife’s death or if Jansson is indirectly commenting on men and their interactions with women and with nature. Many of the men who appear in her story seem lacking in some sense or simply out of step with their environment: the father nearly destroys the surrounding vegetation when he imports exotic plants, diverting resources away from native varieties; a wealthy man builds an extravagant house close to the family’s cabin, an eyesore that disrupts the shoreline. Sometimes Jansson’s depiction of her male characters seems to anticipate elements of ecofeminism; just as other aspects of her story, especially her keen awareness of the fragility of wild things and the delicate balance required to sustain them, give this a distinctly eco-fictional flavour. I particularly relished her depiction of the grandmother which steers well clear of the many appalling stereotypes too often found in representations of elderly women. Jansson acknowledges the grandmother’s growing physical frailty but celebrates her rebellious spirit and her refusal to relinquish her sense of self or her independence. Translated by Thomas Teal.
April 14, 2020
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?
The island setting is based on an uninhabited Finnish island where Jansson and her female partner would spend summers. It’s a pleasant enough book with some beautiful passages, but it’s mostly the grandmother and the child puttering around the island catching fish and visiting a neighbor for cognac and doing something with a cat that I can’t really remember, but I feel sure there was a cat featured, maybe. I was probably in a distracted mood (who isn’t right now?) and didn’t take much hidden meaning out of the book, assuming there was some there. Oh, and there was also a father character that I don’t think ever had any dialogue but floated around periodically in the background.
The last few pages are particularly poignant and haunting. Read it if it’s been sitting on your shelf for a few summers, it’ll kill a few hours away from the news.
The island setting is based on an uninhabited Finnish island where Jansson and her female partner would spend summers. It’s a pleasant enough book with some beautiful passages, but it’s mostly the grandmother and the child puttering around the island catching fish and visiting a neighbor for cognac and doing something with a cat that I can’t really remember, but I feel sure there was a cat featured, maybe. I was probably in a distracted mood (who isn’t right now?) and didn’t take much hidden meaning out of the book, assuming there was some there. Oh, and there was also a father character that I don’t think ever had any dialogue but floated around periodically in the background.
The last few pages are particularly poignant and haunting. Read it if it’s been sitting on your shelf for a few summers, it’ll kill a few hours away from the news.
December 7, 2020
A perfect book. A wonder. Small yet complete. A world in a grain of sand sort of book. If you haven’t read this, better go into it as I did, knowing nothing about it except that the author, Tove Jansson, was a complete artist who could paint, draw, write, swim, garden, cook, tell jokes, live and love like there was no tomorrow.
Hats off to the translator who really makes this one sing.
“It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this—dog days—that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from the sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders.”
And how about those NYRB books? A publishing confectionery. I had to hold myself back from licking the sky-blue inside cover on numerous occasions.
Hats off to the translator who really makes this one sing.
“It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this—dog days—that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from the sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders.”
And how about those NYRB books? A publishing confectionery. I had to hold myself back from licking the sky-blue inside cover on numerous occasions.
Read
June 16, 2023Reviewed in the June 2023 edition of Quick Lit on Modern Mrs Darcy:
Our recent post 15 backlist books that feel like summer reminded me this book was lingering on my TBR. This 1972 novel by Finnish author Jansson (originally written in Swedish, translated by Thomas Teal) reads almost as a series of short stories about a grandmother and her 6-year-old granddaughter spending the summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. The pacing is gentle, the descriptions of the natural world lush and beautiful, and both the heavy and light are handled with gentleness. If you enjoy the works of L.M. Montgomery or Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, this short, contemplative novel could be a good fit for your summer reading list.
Our recent post 15 backlist books that feel like summer reminded me this book was lingering on my TBR. This 1972 novel by Finnish author Jansson (originally written in Swedish, translated by Thomas Teal) reads almost as a series of short stories about a grandmother and her 6-year-old granddaughter spending the summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. The pacing is gentle, the descriptions of the natural world lush and beautiful, and both the heavy and light are handled with gentleness. If you enjoy the works of L.M. Montgomery or Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, this short, contemplative novel could be a good fit for your summer reading list.
September 9, 2023
oh my god i'm in LOVE
FIVE STARS FIVE STARS
full review to come
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
pre-read
the love of my life emma five starred this so you know it's going to be good.
FIVE STARS FIVE STARS
full review to come
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
pre-read
the love of my life emma five starred this so you know it's going to be good.
Read
September 18, 2023Maybe about a year and a half ago, much to my surprise, my mother outed herself to me as a Moomin fan. Here was somebody who I had known all my life and I had been completely unaware that she was even aware of the Moomins, let alone liked them. Mind you I was never a fan myself, I found their lack of mouths unsettling - perhaps that was psychologically significant both for me and Tove Jansson, or perhaps she simply didn't like drawing mouths. Anyway at about that time I noticed this book was being promoted in UK bookshops and even though I sworn a mighty oath by Heaven and Hell, by Darkness and Light, and by all beasties whether with eight legs, six legs, four legs, or even just two legs that I would not buy my mother any more books until she made appreciable, substantive, progress in to her To Be Read pile; which in her case consists of several stacks of books in her bedroom. This appalling poor literary hygiene was something she inherited from my maternal Grandfather who died with a fairly decent tower of books to read on a low table next to his bed, these, I hasten to add, were not a material cause of his demise. Perhaps you might regard this as evidence that he died an optimist, and optimism is maybe not something to repress completely.
Anyhow I held true to my mighty oath for I think at least half a year until I recalled that I found it both pleasant and convenient to buy books for my mother and so I was tempted, even sorely tempted to buy this book for her until from deep within a voice of wisdom resounded: just because she is a Moomin fan, that doesn't mean that she is a Tove Jansson fan. So I put the book back.
And there this silly story might have come already to its overdue end, accept that my mother bought this book for herself. She wasn't wildly impressed - no doubt she would have done well to have listed to that voice of wisdom which resounded from deep within me - however in a cunning book exchange, rather like an exchange of secret agents on a fog shrouded Berlin bridge during the Cold War, I took this book from her in exchange for one that I had read a couple of times, ha!
From the preceding rambly preamble, you may well have already realised a couple of paragraphs ago that I don't have a great deal to say about this book
It's, well, a book, indeed, I can commit myself further and say that it is a Summer book, easy, and lazy, and hazy, the days are long and seem never to end, the weather is fine - until it isn't, and the world is in bloom, even on the Aland Islands off the coast of Finland.
There on a small island - Esther Freud in her introduction to the edition I read, says that it took her only minutes to walk round - live Sophia, and her Grandmother and sometimes Sophia's Father. This is a fictionalised account of the summer (s) that the three spent together with respectively their aunt, daughter, sister: Tove Janssen. So the first observation is that the author has comprehensively written herself out of the narrative, she is however the omniscient narrative voice. That voice and awareness limits itself to Sophia's scale, therefore the island as we experience it in the narrative is big, the small events dramatic.
Most of the stories, and I would say this is less a novel and more a collection of stories deal with the relationship between Sophia and her grandmother, and this reminded me very strongly of Lea Ypi's book Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History in which the relationship between the young Ypi and her grandmother is very important. Sophia though is younger than Lea, we hear the voice of a child of between five and seven I guess; crawling, exploring and asking questions. Those latter are quite funny. Equally we are increasingly in grandmother's head experiencing her responses, her reactions and her thought on want she can't express or explain to a child. And that makes it a very pleasing book about the fairly different intellectual and emotional worlds of being old and being young, and the relationship between the two. So it becomes a little book about family life.
Something else that caught my attention was the fragility of the environment - the moment when Jansson describes how you can't tread on the moss took me back to reading nooit meer slapen where by contrast you are not to step on the grass in the far north of Norway, because you will kill it. It's an idea that haunts me and is an appropriate symbol for the experiences of the humans in the book as well. The Grandmother is old and wise, but she wasn't always so, Sophia is young, a bounding, excited mess of big emotional experiences, but she won't be so for very long. Their states and existences are as fragile as of the moss, what we read is just the most delicate impression of that moss on the page. A perfect dreamy, hazy book for summer.
Anyhow I held true to my mighty oath for I think at least half a year until I recalled that I found it both pleasant and convenient to buy books for my mother and so I was tempted, even sorely tempted to buy this book for her until from deep within a voice of wisdom resounded: just because she is a Moomin fan, that doesn't mean that she is a Tove Jansson fan. So I put the book back.
And there this silly story might have come already to its overdue end, accept that my mother bought this book for herself. She wasn't wildly impressed - no doubt she would have done well to have listed to that voice of wisdom which resounded from deep within me - however in a cunning book exchange, rather like an exchange of secret agents on a fog shrouded Berlin bridge during the Cold War, I took this book from her in exchange for one that I had read a couple of times, ha!
From the preceding rambly preamble, you may well have already realised a couple of paragraphs ago that I don't have a great deal to say about this book
It's, well, a book, indeed, I can commit myself further and say that it is a Summer book, easy, and lazy, and hazy, the days are long and seem never to end, the weather is fine - until it isn't, and the world is in bloom, even on the Aland Islands off the coast of Finland.
There on a small island - Esther Freud in her introduction to the edition I read, says that it took her only minutes to walk round - live Sophia, and her Grandmother and sometimes Sophia's Father. This is a fictionalised account of the summer (s) that the three spent together with respectively their aunt, daughter, sister: Tove Janssen. So the first observation is that the author has comprehensively written herself out of the narrative, she is however the omniscient narrative voice. That voice and awareness limits itself to Sophia's scale, therefore the island as we experience it in the narrative is big, the small events dramatic.
Most of the stories, and I would say this is less a novel and more a collection of stories deal with the relationship between Sophia and her grandmother, and this reminded me very strongly of Lea Ypi's book Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History in which the relationship between the young Ypi and her grandmother is very important. Sophia though is younger than Lea, we hear the voice of a child of between five and seven I guess; crawling, exploring and asking questions. Those latter are quite funny. Equally we are increasingly in grandmother's head experiencing her responses, her reactions and her thought on want she can't express or explain to a child. And that makes it a very pleasing book about the fairly different intellectual and emotional worlds of being old and being young, and the relationship between the two. So it becomes a little book about family life.
Something else that caught my attention was the fragility of the environment - the moment when Jansson describes how you can't tread on the moss took me back to reading nooit meer slapen where by contrast you are not to step on the grass in the far north of Norway, because you will kill it. It's an idea that haunts me and is an appropriate symbol for the experiences of the humans in the book as well. The Grandmother is old and wise, but she wasn't always so, Sophia is young, a bounding, excited mess of big emotional experiences, but she won't be so for very long. Their states and existences are as fragile as of the moss, what we read is just the most delicate impression of that moss on the page. A perfect dreamy, hazy book for summer.
May 25, 2023
I have not yet graduated to the title of grandmother but I hope that someday when that opportunity arrives, that I will take on the role with as much grace and mercy, love and tenderness, fun and learning as possible! I’ve heard nothing but fabulous things about being a grandparent. Aren’t grandparents supposed to just have fun and create a special bond with that little person that no-one else in the world can describe or emulate? Well, when that day comes for me, I’ll be back here to tell you all about it, I’m sure!
In this little novella, we get to experience the relationship of a grandmother and her 6 year old grand daughter who get to spend an entire summer on an island off the coast of Finland. Nature plays a tremendous role in their lives and naturally, they use it to create some very special moments together. These two are such grouches at times and each of them believes she is right and knows what she is talking about often. Sometimes I wondered who was the adult and who was the child! They love each other but they grumble and yet, they can have serious conversations. They talk and learn and often it’s about the tough stuff like what love is, how to pray to God, what Heaven looks like, and when are we going to die. But they have fun, too, learning how to carve animals from branches for their magic forest and talking about what different birds represent. These two take care of each other in their own ways while having fun creating adventures and making up stories.
”It’s funny about love,” Sophia said. “The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.”
“That’s very true,” Grandmother observed. “And so what do you do?
“You go on loving,” said Sophia threateningly. “You love harder and harder.”
Because of their close knit relationship, these two know each other’s fears and what will calm the other. There is an underlying current of feeling throughout each story that gives the sense that there is a sadness hovering over this summer. Sophia realizes that her mother is not with them this summer and there is a constant void but it doesn’t ever seem to be talked about. Sophia and her grandmother are always learning new things every day and what I found special about their relationship was how comfortable they could be with each other in their fears, excitements, anger, frustrations and joys. That sounds like a perfect kind of relationship to me!
In this little novella, we get to experience the relationship of a grandmother and her 6 year old grand daughter who get to spend an entire summer on an island off the coast of Finland. Nature plays a tremendous role in their lives and naturally, they use it to create some very special moments together. These two are such grouches at times and each of them believes she is right and knows what she is talking about often. Sometimes I wondered who was the adult and who was the child! They love each other but they grumble and yet, they can have serious conversations. They talk and learn and often it’s about the tough stuff like what love is, how to pray to God, what Heaven looks like, and when are we going to die. But they have fun, too, learning how to carve animals from branches for their magic forest and talking about what different birds represent. These two take care of each other in their own ways while having fun creating adventures and making up stories.
”It’s funny about love,” Sophia said. “The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.”
“That’s very true,” Grandmother observed. “And so what do you do?
“You go on loving,” said Sophia threateningly. “You love harder and harder.”
Because of their close knit relationship, these two know each other’s fears and what will calm the other. There is an underlying current of feeling throughout each story that gives the sense that there is a sadness hovering over this summer. Sophia realizes that her mother is not with them this summer and there is a constant void but it doesn’t ever seem to be talked about. Sophia and her grandmother are always learning new things every day and what I found special about their relationship was how comfortable they could be with each other in their fears, excitements, anger, frustrations and joys. That sounds like a perfect kind of relationship to me!
June 30, 2023
The Summer Book is a slender, anecdotal novel, written in the clear, unadorned prose of a classic children’s book. It will slip by in an afternoon and be over before you know it. But don’t be fooled—Jansson is fearless. Moving seamlessly between the perspectives of a child and her grandmother, the novel plumbs the mysteries of aging and death, God and guilt, human folly in the face of nature’s power and the fragility of nature in the face of human folly.
Some of the reviews on this website suggest that this book has flaws. Those reviewers are wrong. Every page is magical. It is funny and profound and I am already looking forward to reading it again.
An important aside: my edition (from the library) did not have the author’s wonderful illustrations. Dear Random House editor who published this book in America in 1974—what on Earth were you thinking? Anyway, find a copy with the pictures!
Some of the reviews on this website suggest that this book has flaws. Those reviewers are wrong. Every page is magical. It is funny and profound and I am already looking forward to reading it again.
An important aside: my edition (from the library) did not have the author’s wonderful illustrations. Dear Random House editor who published this book in America in 1974—what on Earth were you thinking? Anyway, find a copy with the pictures!
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