The Summer Book

  ‘'One time in April, there was a full moon, and the sea was covered with ice. Sophia woke up and remembered that they had gone back to the island and that she had a bed to herself because her mother was dead.''
Sophia and her grandmother spend the summer on a small island in the Gulf of Finland. the child is difficult, at times impossible. She is also charismatic, inquisitive and absolutely brilliant. Grandma is wise, opinionated, feisty and protective. Through their tempestuous relationship and the wild beauty of the landscape they call ‘home', we witness the bond and the gaps between the generations, we watch the marriage between humans and Nature, and, quietly, we may begin to turn our eyes inside us, on our relationships and priorities.
‘'Well'', Grandmother said, ‘'it did die now, all the same.''‘'How did it die?'', Sophia yelled. She was very angry.‘'Of unrequited love.''
In 22 short chapters, Tove Jansson paints a world of ‘magic' forests, silent steps and cries, driftwood and seaweed, summer winds and evening light. Of the full moon and the unpredictable sea, of a grandmother that always stands her ground, a child that wonders how God can keep track of all the people who pray at the same time, who prays to be brave, who tries not to get bored, who struggles to find her world bereaved of her mother while her father is a silent, almost absent, figure. The island is there, watching and listening while Sophia struggles to make sense of the world that opens before her and her grandmother tries to understand the ‘noise' that humans create unnecessarily.
“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.”
Beautifully translated by Thomas Teal. The Introduction by Kathryn Davis did not do justice to Jansson's work, in my opinion.
‘'Every year, the bright Scandinavian summer nights fade away without anyone's noticing. One evening in August you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden it's pitch-black. A great warm, dark silence surrounds the house. 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.''
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
 

I should've read this in the summer

A charming and reserved collection of vignettes wherein very little happens but everyone comes out a bit wiser. I have been a huge fan of Jansson's Moomin series for years and didn't realize until the introduction that this was also written by her (was looking for summer books and, well...). Her voice is very similar to her comics and still a delight, though I feel like something is lost without her illustrations. She has a way of describing the world like a depressed and cerebral child, whichs works amazing when paired with the silly Moomin designs but here just creates a sense of absence. In a way it's fitting for the themes of death, growing old, bodies wearing down, but feels more an accident of form than an intentional tone.

Was not quite the carefree summer getaway I was looking for, but I'm beginning to notice that most media centered around summer is almost by necessity a meditation on the passage of time and the implacable sadness that follows.

Perfect book for the summer. It was a nice break from the last book I read, which mostly concerns with people attending parties, complicated relationships, and generally things that are moving way too fast.

Sometimes I just want to spend a summer on an island, and be disenfaged for a bit you know. Lifting up rocks and picking out strand of seaweeds off the shore, with the sounds of the waves caressing the sand in gentle and steady motion.

Beautifully written. At once warm and natural and cold and melancholy and hopeful and the right amount of creepy. I like Grandmother

I read Fair Play last year and adored it so wanted to read more Jansson. This wasn't quite as good for me, but was still really charming. Sophia was a bit obnoxious, but she is a kid, and I loved Grandmother. The little vignettes were sweet and made me want to live on an island off Finland. The one where Sophia is dictating her book was so relatable - my son has been dictating poems to me recently. I'm glad I read this and will continue to read more Jansson.

I read this book for a book club I got in (Laufey's BookClub), and overall I really enjoyed this book. I think I should reread the last couple of chapters since I read them on a ride back home late at night, and I was very tired. My favorite chapters were The Cat and The Tent. It didn't have an overarching plot and loads of description, so I struggled a little bit, but the characters warmed up to me. I see a lot of myself when I was young in Sophia, especially her curiosity. The grandmother had a lot of similar traits to my grandmother, and I can imagine us both having similar conversations like the one's grandmother and Sophia had. I'll definitely share this book with her.

A heartwarming, sweet tale depicting long-lost summers on an island in Finland. The central theme is the poignant relationship between a grandmother and a small child, revealing the similarities and differences! between growing up and growing old. The story is an easy read, with little plot, but is rich in its descriptions of nature and, at times, is quite funny

A heartwarming, sweet tale depicting long-lost summers on an island in Finland. The central theme is the poignant relationship between a grandmother and a small child, revealing the similarities and differences! between growing up and growing old. The story is an easy read, with little plot, but is rich in its descriptions of nature and, at times, is quite funny

The Summer Book is a great departure from my usual reads. It matches any sort of difficult conversations with lightheartedness and care. A sweet, almost lackadaisical kind of a read.

If you haven't read this book yet, why not? It's near perfect. Enchanting and funny, melancholy, at one with nature, the story of a girl and her grandmother who spend the summer on a small island in the Gulf of Finland. Between the pair, all the big questions are asked and answered with wit and wisdom. Fuller review here: https://annabookbel.net/nordicfinds-finland-week-my-would-be-gateway-book

A little island on the Finnish coast. We accompany a slightly cranky grandmother and her 6 year old willful granddaughter through 22 vignettes. Solitude, so much nature, and the occasional adventure.

Whisks you away into a magical summer world and leaves you calm and contend.

Sophia can't letting go of her love for murderous Moppy, probably was my favorite.

Why it took me almost three weeks to finish this relatively short series of vignettes is hard to fathom. I suppose tax season is getting in the way of reading. But, I didn't enjoy the first half of the book as much as the second half, so that may be another issue. Also, there were times when the language seemed very odd, which may be to do with the translation.

One of my favorite vignettes was “Of Anglefish and Others,” which had me laughing out loud. I really liked the grandmother, who almost stepped gingerly off of the page, poking at things with her cane and saying something cantankerous. And it is inside the grandmother's thoughts that we end the novel, which ties the vignettes together nicely.

A grandmother and her young granddaughter come to stay on an island for the summer. The mother of the granddaughter, we soon learn, has recently died. Jansson is too good of a writer to let the story circle around and around that, but the mother's death lies quietly at the heart of the book. The real focus is the beautiful way the grandmother and granddaughter grow closer and closer. Jansson is a master and this book is a deserved classic.

Charming and funny, but there is a subtle darkness and sadness underneath the surface. I read it exclusively on the beach (on Lake Huron and then Lake Erie) and the sunburn was worth it. Reminded me of Emily Carr's Klee Wyck, but with more appreciation for the child's perspective and imagination. I loved that Sophia is always shouting and screaming, so stubborn and selfish and single-minded, like a real kid.

—

“They went closer to the house and could feel how the island had changed. It was no longer wild. It had become lower, almost flat, and looked ordinary and embarrassed. The vegetation had not been disturbed; on the contrary, the owner had had broad catwalks built over the heather and the blueberry bushes. He had been very careful of the vegetation. The gray juniper bushes had not been cut down. But the island seemed flat all the same, because it should not have had a house. From up close, this way, the house was fairly low. On the elevations, it had probably been pretty. It would have been pretty anywhere, except here.”

—

Sophia dictates a study about worms to her grandmother (brought to mind when a couple of days later I read about the young Alison Bechdel dictating her diary to her mother in Are You My Mother?). After a worm stretches itself out and breaks apart:

“Both halves fell down on the ground, and the person with the hook went away. They couldn't grow back together, because they were terribly upset, and then, of course, they didn't stop to think, either. And they knew that by and by the'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. ....

“Presumably, everything that happened to them after that only seemed like half as much, but this was also sort of a relief, and then, too, nothing they did was their fault any more, somehow. They just blamed each other. Or else they'd say that after a thing like that, you just weren't yourself any more. there is one thing that makes it more complicated, and that is that there is such a big difference between the front end and the back end. A worm never goes backwards, and so for that reason, it has its head only at one end. But if God made angleworms so they can come apart and then grow out again, why, there must be some sort of secret nerve that leads out in the back end so that later on it can think. Otherwise it couldn't get along by itself. But the back end has a very tiny brain. It can probably remember its other half, which went first and made all the decisions. And so now ... the back end says, ‘Which way should I grow out? Should I go on following and never have to make any important decisions, or should I be the one who always knows best, until I come apart again? That would be exciting.' But maybe he's so used to being the tail that he just lets things go on the way they are.”