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The Summer Book

by Tove Jansson, Esther Freud (Introduction), Thomas Teal (Translator)

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 2,715 ratings · 460 reviews

Tove Jansson was a genius. This is a marvellous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny. - Esther Freud

An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter while a way a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. Gradually, the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and yearnings for independence, and a fierce yet understated love emerges...more

Paperback, 172 pages

Published 2003 by Sort of Books (first published 1972)

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Jan 25, 2011 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core

Swedish-speaking Finnish Tove Jansson (1914-2001), author of Moomin books, was a lesbian. Coming from highly artistic family, she wrote and illustrated the famous "Moomin" children's book that came out after WWII when she felt like creating something "innocent." That children's book became the most popular series in Europe in the 40's and 50's.

Then came the death of her mother in 1972. Sad and grieving, she wrote The Summer Book which is now considered as a Scandinavian classic and has never bee...more Swedish-speaking Finnish Tove Jansson (1914-2001), author of Moomin books, was a lesbian. Coming from highly artistic family, she wrote and illustrated the famous "Moomin" children's book that came out after WWII when she felt like creating something "innocent." That children's book became the most popular series in Europe in the 40's and 50's.

Then came the death of her mother in 1972. Sad and grieving, she wrote The Summer Book which is now considered as a Scandinavian classic and has never been out of print. It is a story of one summer in a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland where an elderly artist and her 6-y/o granddaughter, Sophia stayed together with Sophia's dad. The island is so tiny that it took the author, Esther Freud (who wrote the book's introduction to the edition I read) 4-1/2 minutes to go around it. This latest edition has even pictures of the real-life characters and a couple of pictures showing the island or a part of it.

The characters of the grandmother and Sophia were said to be based on Jansson's niece, Sophia Jansson and her mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson. However, in the story, it is obvious that the 6-y/o Sophia is Tove: she woke up realizing that she has no one to share her bed with as her mother has just died and the dialogue that she had with her grandmother, wanting to instead call her "mother."

What I like about this book is its subtlety. It does not tell you how you should feel but it is through your reading and processing the dialogues when you realized how the relationship of the grandmother and Sophia can make a difference in your life. Jansson's choice of characters is exquisite. In one of the dialogues, the grandmother says: "People were either too young or too old, or else they didn't have time". A line that is an eye-opener or a reminder: that we who are in-between these two characters should stop once-in-a-while and smell the roses. It also helps that Jansson's thoughts on death are sprinkled everywhere in those conversations as those help readers realize that life is too short to miss the scent of the roses.

Tove Jansson, just like my favorite Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), is a true artist. If I were born during either of their lifetimes, I would have courted one of them to be my wife or maybe just as friend as both preferred to have women as life partners.(less)

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Feb 08, 2012 SilverRaindrops rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-around-the-world-in-52-books, reviewstatus-reviewed

"The Summer Book" by Tove Jansson, telling about a grandchilds' and a grandmothers' summer vacations on their island, is praised as one of Scandinavia's modern classics, and it is easy to see why.
The novel brings a typical quiet Scandinavian summer to life; just the type of "still-holiday-but-also-something-else-entirely" that I remember having with my family when I was younger.

The chapters are quite short (ten pages at most I think), and one doesn't need to read them all in one go, which makes...more

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Nov 25, 2011 bup rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, 2011, novella, favorites, classic

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...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Trish rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, literature, ocean, scandinavian, islands

Jansson captures not only a season but life itself with this short novel of a grandmother and her granddaughter summering on an island in the Gulf of Finland. The freshness of spring turns to the muggy veil of summer, and when August comes, our feelings of ending and loss are those we experience every year in this month.

Grandmother remains unnamed, perhaps to preserve that essential privacy that she explains to her friend Verner must always be reserved. But her granddaughter Sophia is six years...more Jansson captures not only a season but life itself with this short novel of a grandmother and her granddaughter summering on an island in the Gulf of Finland. The freshness of spring turns to the muggy veil of summer, and when August comes, our feelings of ending and loss are those we experience every year in this month.

Grandmother remains unnamed, perhaps to preserve that essential privacy that she explains to her friend Verner must always be reserved. But her granddaughter Sophia is six years old. Sophia’s mother has recently died, and her loss is little mentioned but much felt in a handful of remarks made by each throughout the time they spend together. How can an aging grandmother who is often aware of her diminished physical and mental capabilities relate to a six-year-old? About as well as a six-year-old can relate to a sixty-year-old…with difficulty, but with synergistic results. Life is a struggle no matter what creature we are, and we can’t always control the things that will affect us. But we can do the best we can and allow God to handle the rest. “The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you’ve made an effort on your own.”

I have not read Jansson’s series of books for children yet, called the Moomin books, but they are described in NYRB’s introduction by Kathryn Davis thus: “the Moomin books—pictures in which creatures of cartoonlike simplicity comport themselves in a painstakingly detailed natural world…” Jansson describes the island habitat of The Summer Book with Zen-like clarity:

She saw the conical depression in the sand at the foot of the blade of grass and the wisp of seaweed that had twined around the stem. Right next to it lay a piece of bark. If you looked at it for a long time it grew and became a very ancient mountain. The upper side had craters and excavations that looked like whirlpools. The scrap of bark was beautiful and dramatic. It rested above its shadow on a single point of contact, and the grains of sand were coarse, clean, almost gray in the morning light, and the sky was completely clear, as was the sea.”

The characters in this book for adults, however, are not “cartoonlike in their simplicity.” They are rich with feelings of anger, spitefulness, tiredness, boredom, as well as joy, happiness, pleasure, and love. The grandmother can be crotchety to the point of sharpness, and little Sophia surprises us with adult words and emotions newly learned. But the two feed each other’s imaginations: they create a sea-side Venice, furnish a magic forest, and set off in journeys of discovery. Together they create a world neither would give away for any other.

A friend has shared a website on Tove Jansson with essential facts and pictures. She was Finnish, born in 1914 and died in 2001. She was born into a warm, open-hearted home in which both parents were artists and storytelling was prized. She became a painter and writer. In another blogpost, we get pictures of Tove Jansson’s mother with Tove’s niece, Sophia, and the picture makes the entire book come clear. This is a wonderfully atmospheric story that will allow you to experience summer at any time of the year.
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Aug 08, 2008 Lesley rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a book to savour. It is about an artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter, spending summer days together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. I am lingering over each thought-provoking episode. I think it is a book that Laura would enjoy. She was a child who inhabited storyworlds, like Sophia, and became deeply involved. I chose it because I remembered David reading Moomin books when he was small. Apparently this book is regarded as a modern classic throughout Scandinavia.

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Mar 17, 2013 Diana rated it 5 of 5 stars

A dear friend gave me this book and I'm ashamed to say I had never heard of the author (children's books weren't my thing as a kid). I started reading it in hospital when I thought I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything. It turned out to be perfect. The Summer Book is more like a series of short stories on related themes than a single plot novel. It's about an island, a grandmother and her grand daughter and the times spent there during the Scandinavian summer.
It is deceptively simple an...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

A few pages into reading "The Summer Book," I stopped for a moment and thought, "Now, this is lovely writing."

Composed of twenty-two short vignettes of the interactions between precocious six-year-old Sophia and her sharp-tongued, aging Grandmother, "The Summer Book" is compact, concise, and nearly perfect. The stories all contain a little sliver of wisdom, or truth, folded into the sometimes witty and sometimes banal conversations between granddaughter and grandmother, and Tove's observations o...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Antonomasia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nordic, 2012, seventies

The lingering memories of The Summer Book are of having dwelt for a while in a dreamlike idyll. Yet as with other similarly-affecting books, Brideshead and Le Grand Meaulnes , there is darkness too, deeper within the reverie.

The exquisitely-described landscapes of a small Finnish island are remoter and rockier and mossier and harsher than those of early twentieth century France or southern England. The peace and isolation are a holiday in themselves: it's something north european fiction does ve...more The lingering memories of The Summer Book are of having dwelt for a while in a dreamlike idyll. Yet as with other similarly-affecting books, Brideshead and Le Grand Meaulnes , there is darkness too, deeper within the reverie.

The exquisitely-described landscapes of a small Finnish island are remoter and rockier and mossier and harsher than those of early twentieth century France or southern England. The peace and isolation are a holiday in themselves: it's something north european fiction does very well. I've never experienced such relaxation from reading books as from this and the also-rural settings of Greenvoe and Out Stealing Horses . And the translator's repeated use of the word 'skerry' amplifies the similarity of Nordic and Scottish landscapes.

It's not the book of one summer: the summers mingle, un-numbered and out of time as if there were no school or Christmas between.

Sophia at the start is six, and her mother has recently died; the impact is never narrated or analysed - what a relief! - we just feel the soothing effect of the landscape and freedom to play.

Her Grandmother, her companion throughout the book, doesn't always say the right thing - but with great wisdom and understanding, often intuits the best course of action. Unlike my grandmothers who lived among mildly tense conversational gaps, the quiet tick of clocks, the rustle of napkins and the pour of hot drinks, Sophia's is a roguish adventurer: they climb rocks they shouldn't, break into a deserted house and get up to other mischief much like Royal Tenenbaum on his outings with Ari and Uzi. Aside from one mention that Grandmother was once a leader of girl scouts in Sweden, who won them the freedom to be able to go camping, the escapades are free of gender-political comment: these two are simply being themselves.

Sophia may be charming and cute sometimes, but throughout she is also a stroppy wilful brat who knows her own mind and doesn't react in a sugar-and-spice way to being frightened. The first moment that cuts jagged through the stillness is when she screams and cries distraught at the idea that a duck may have killed himself. Whether the average reader - for this book is a classic in Scandinavia - is assumed to accept Sophia's noise particularly because of her bereavement, I don't know, but her imperfection makes the book more perfect. And from one former stroppy wilful brat to another, it's a truer childhood than it would be with some Pollyanna protagonist.

It would have been quite lovely to have read this out in the sun at the height of summer, but the end instead matches our summer's end.(less)

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Nov 08, 2008 Ken rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You have to applaud simplicity in writing. It is the hardest thing for a writer to achieve. That sense of keeping the book ‘small’ for lack of a better term, honing the story down to the barest strokes on the canvas. I always thought Hemingway did it beautifully with The Old Man and the Sea. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson is another great ‘small’ book that draws you in with its perfectly simple prose and contstruction.

In many ways, Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book is closer to the latter. It...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Nick Turner rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: close-relations, adventure, present

Sophia recalls summer time with her grandmother on an island in the Gulf of Finland.

A girl and her grandmother walk together overcoming difficulties by cooperation. There are naive questions from young Sophia and reassuring answers from her grandmother.

I listened to an abridged audio radio adaptation. With an age-appropriate voice actor for each role. Starring Phyllida Law and Sophie Thompson.

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Mar 18, 2010 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: BBC listeners

Shelves: one-penny-wonder, fraudio, spring-2010, published-1972, re-read, play-dramatisation, those-autumn-years, translation, shortstory-shortstories-novellas

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 15, 2012 Neale rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction, nature-writing, in-translation

A young girl and her grandma on a tiny Finnish island: brief, luminous chapters about life, death, summer. A truly lovely book, in the best possible way. Funny, sad, unsentimental, as open-ended as real life (its emotional undercurrents are driven more by what is not said than what is), with an exquisite feeling for youth and old age, and an intensely lyrical evocation of the small details of nature and life – the only ones that really matter...

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Jan 08, 2009 Marie rated it 5 of 5 stars

What a wonderful book- just about perfectly written. I agree that simplicity in writing is difficult to achieve and Jansson does this with great sensitivity.

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Apr 20, 2013 Carol rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a perfectly lovely book. There are twenty two chapters or vignettes, each one about a single event in a summer that Sophia (age about 6) and her grandmother spend on a small island in the Gulf of Finland. Along with Sophia's father, they are the only inhabitants on the island. It rains too much; it rains too little; a stranger builds an enormous home on a neighboring island that blocks their view; the grandmother loses her false teeth and Sophia finds them; a bratty child comes for a vis...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Ann rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Such a lovely book about a grandmother and her granddaughter Sophia.
The only note of criticism I have for this book that at times the writing seems a little simplistic (could even categorize it as being a children’s book)
The writing is easy and minimalistic, stories naïve, humorous and positive while still having a philosophical viewpoint on dying and life.
The stories are about their summers on a small island with Sophia’s father (her mother has passed away). The subtext is about a child accept...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Al rated it 4 of 5 stars

InThe Summer BookTove 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 par

...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Shonna Froebel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: translations

This classic is a collection of vignettes illustrating summer months spent on an island in the Finnish archipelago. Jansson spent a great deal of her life on such an island, so knew it well. Here we have Sophia, a young girl spending the summer on the island with her grandmother and her father. The point of view moves seamlessly between Sophia and her grandmother, changing back and forth often and in a way that flows. The grandmother is ageing and her body doesn't always allow her to do what she...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Rick Skwiot rated it 4 of 5 stars

Though she gained world renown as author and illustrator of the Moomin children’s books, the late Tove Jansson (1914-2001) also wrote praiseworthy novels for adults. Recently I read two of them at opposite ends of the psychological spectrum, translated into English by Thomas Teal. (Though Finnish by birth, Jansson wrote in her Swedish mother tongue.)

I was immediately attracted to The Summer Book, which she wrote in 1972 after her mother’s death, perhaps in part because of its similarities to my...more Though she gained world renown as author and illustrator of the Moomin children’s books, the late Tove Jansson (1914-2001) also wrote praiseworthy novels for adults. Recently I read two of them at opposite ends of the psychological spectrum, translated into English by Thomas Teal. (Though Finnish by birth, Jansson wrote in her Swedish mother tongue.)

I was immediately attracted to The Summer Book, which she wrote in 1972 after her mother’s death, perhaps in part because of its similarities to my own childhood memoir, Christmas at Long Lake, which I wrote shortly after my mother’s death. Both depict the largely idyllic childhoods of six-year-olds with the specter of loss dimming them like a mist—in my case, the imminent loss of my home; in the case of Jansson’s Sophia, the recent death of her mother.

Sophia, isolated on a Gulf of Finland island with her grandmother and spectral father, finds adventure, mystery, magic, and meaning in the placid, secluded life. Told straightforwardly without sentimentality, the book resonated all the more nostalgically with me for its sparseness, reminding me of my isolated childhood. The limitations of the island serve as a frame and imperative for the inventiveness and inquisitiveness of the child and her grandmother, fueling their investigations into nature, existence, love, and family. A charming and fortifying book, it deserves the substantial critical praise it has received both here and in Europe.

I found Jansson’s The True Deceiver, penned ten years later, haunting and thought-provoking, its measured pace working to lure the reader into darker and deeper psychological realms. It delves into the stunted psyches of a small, snowbound costal town. In Spartan prose she weaves the tale of the increasingly entwined lives of two women at opposite ends of the town’s social scale, bringing into question the “truth” of their separate existences. For me it raised fundamental questions: Which of our deceptions—including self-deceptions—are pragmatic and beneficent and which dysfunctional? Is the artist’s “vision” a useful self-deception, a prism that makes things clearer albeit still distorted? Is kindness often a deception? What is the proper balance between truth and deception?

Jansson’s taut prose, sharp characterizations and telling images work to expose the deceptions of the whole village in this compact and compelling novel. It is as dark and cold as The Summer Book is warm and comforting.
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Nov 15, 2012 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

When I bought this book I assumed it was a collection of short stories which it could quite easily be. Each chapter is independent of the rest although all feature the two main characters, six-year-old Sophia and her grandmother. He father potters around the edges of some of the stories but he's not the main focus. Sophia's mother has died and so the grandmother has stepped up. This book tracks their evolving relationship during summers spent on an isolated island. It is a book of vignettes real...more

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Oct 07, 2012 Elizabeth Schlatter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Not what I'd expected but I still couldn't put it down. It's a story about a grandmother and granddaughter, both with very strong personalities, who spend summers on a tiny island in Finland. I'd thought it was going to be a bit more sweet and frankly, touching. It's not, but it's still wonderful as the author created these obstinate, curious, overly dramatic, and independent characters who clearly love their surroundings and each other, even if they sometimes disagree.

My favorite lines from th...more

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May 06, 2012 Sienna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, kindle

Recommended if you like to love. This reminded me of Madeleine L'Engle's extraordinary Crosswicks Journals with its gentle, elegant treatment of life and death. I chuckled whenever religion popped up with the sleek head and dark, unfathomable eyes of a seal, the inevitable disagreement rising in a crescendo. I felt my breath catch when two people near the end of their lives discussed the problem of hobbies. Chapter after chapter stunned with simple honesty, humor and wisdom. (Grandmother was not...more Recommended if you like to love. This reminded me of Madeleine L'Engle's extraordinary Crosswicks Journals with its gentle, elegant treatment of life and death. I chuckled whenever religion popped up with the sleek head and dark, unfathomable eyes of a seal, the inevitable disagreement rising in a crescendo. I felt my breath catch when two people near the end of their lives discussed the problem of hobbies. Chapter after chapter stunned with simple honesty, humor and wisdom. (Grandmother was not the only source of the latter, appropriately: Sophia proved she had been named well.) Here's a sample, chosen somewhat arbitrarily from the forty-two passages I couldn't resist highlighting — only somewhat, because one of my strangest, most beloved childhood memories involved accompanying my parents to a hillside paddock beside some of the groves for which Orange County was named, once upon a time, and collecting cattle bones that we then carried home in plastic grocery bags along the main street of my hometown. There may have been an incident with a bull, and those bovine skeletons may still have a home with my folks. Anyway:

Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you're looking for. If you're picking raspberries, you see only what's red, and if you're looking for bones you see only the white. No matter where you go, the only thing you see is bones. Sometimes they are as thin as needles, extremely fine and delicate, and have to be handled with great care. Sometimes they are large, heavy thighbones, or a cage of ribs buried in the sand like the timbers of a shipwreck. Brones come in a thousand shapes and every one of them has its own structure.

But that's not enough. Sophia's experiment with camping — following in the trailblazing footsteps of a grandmother who had made the activity possible for female Scouts — is a perfect little microcosm:

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.

"We had campfires," she answered briefly, and suddenly she felt sad.

"And what else?"

"There was a log that burned for a long time. We sat around the fire. It was cold out. We ate soup."

That's strange, Grandmother thought. I can't describe things anymore. I can't find the words, or maybe it's just that I'm not trying hard enough. It was such a long time ago. No one here was even born. And unless I tell it because I want to, it's as if it never happened; it gets closed off and then it's lost. She sat up and said, "Some days I can't remember very well. But sometime you ought to try and sleep in a tent all night."

...

The sheltering tent had let in all the night, as close as if she'd been sleeping on the open ground. More birds cried in various ways, and the darkness was filled with strange movements and sounds, the kind no one can trace or account for. The kind no one can even describe.

"Oh, dear God," Sophia said, "don't let me get scared!" And immediately she started thinking about what it would be like to get scared. "Oh, dear God, don't let them make fun of me if I do get scared!"

She really listened for the first time in her life. And when she got out in the ravine, she noticed for the first time what the ground felt like under her toes and the soles of her feet. It was cold, grainy, terribly complicated ground that changed as she walked — gravel and wet grass and big flat stones, and every now and then some plant as high as a bush would brush against her legs. The ground was dark, but the sky had a faint, grey light. The island had grown tiny, floating on the water like a drifting leaf, but there was a light in the guest room window. Sophia knocked very gently, because every sound had become too large.

I haven't the time or energy to do this little book justice tonight, except to say: Never having been there, I've no desire to leave Jansson's little island.(less)

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Feb 22, 2012 Sam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Thematically similar but strikingly different in rhythm and tone from the True Deceiver, the Summer Book operates in a register and rhythm that seems reminiscent of children's literature without being wedded to any of the tropes therein. Events crop up, never to be repeated, and small actions linger for a long time, so that the reader is always moderately disoriented, but the even tone of the narration is so comforting that such small distortions come to seem like the honest reportage of two cha...more Thematically similar but strikingly different in rhythm and tone from the True Deceiver, the Summer Book operates in a register and rhythm that seems reminiscent of children's literature without being wedded to any of the tropes therein. Events crop up, never to be repeated, and small actions linger for a long time, so that the reader is always moderately disoriented, but the even tone of the narration is so comforting that such small distortions come to seem like the honest reportage of two characters living on a remote island, as opposed to some kind of structural trick. All this is to say that the tone here is unique without feeling showy in any way, situating us fully in both Sophia's mind and the mind of her grandmother.

Each small section feels complete on its own without detracting from the unity of the overarching narrative - a difficult trick to pull off, I think, and evidence of Jansson's lightness of tone throughout. There are moments of genuine suspense (a stormy picnic, an episode where Grandmother and Sophia break into the house of an island newcomer) and also moments of real pathos, like when Sophia kills a worm and then dictates a short book about worms to her Grandmother out of guilt and atonement, or when Verner visits and sadly explains that his family wants him to have hobbies but he doesn't want to have a hobby simply because someone feels he should - he wants to find his own interests and be treated like a human being.

The sense of possibility and confusion in childhood and the sense (as far as I can understand it, being a whippersnapper) of exhaustion and doggedness in old age are both conveyed beautifully and carefully here. Really, I can't say enough about the endless and careful modulations of language here, the way each sentence seems as if it moves just the slightest bit crosswise from the last, opening up small anterior worlds with each step, yet managing the whole while to progress forward and keep the reader moving in the slow march of revealed time.

As my friend Jacob would say - approvingly - Bananas!

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Sep 02, 2011 Taylor Norman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-literary-fiction, new-york-review-books, hans-christian-andersen-winner

My favorite quotes:

“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” (15).

“Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you’re looking for. If you’re picking raspberries, you see only what’s red, and if you’re looking for bones you see only the white” (15).

“That’s strange,’ Grandmother thought. I can’t describe things any more. I can’t find the words, or maybe it’s just...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Anna rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, bookcrossing

I know this book is very popular, especially in the North, and is considered a huge classic. I grew up in a country where all other children except me seemed to like the moomins. I didn't like them, and I never liked Pippi Longstocking or similar fictional characters for children either. There were moomins everywhere, and what's worst is having a mum who likes the children's stuff when you can't stand that stuff in the age you are supposed to like it. Jansson was most famous for her "innocent" m...more I know this book is very popular, especially in the North, and is considered a huge classic. I grew up in a country where all other children except me seemed to like the moomins. I didn't like them, and I never liked Pippi Longstocking or similar fictional characters for children either. There were moomins everywhere, and what's worst is having a mum who likes the children's stuff when you can't stand that stuff in the age you are supposed to like it. Jansson was most famous for her "innocent" moomins series (I'm proud to never have owned anything with moomins, and of my poor knowledge of the characters: the parent trolls, the kid troll, all of which look like hippo like white blobs, and an angry midget female wannabe witch with a bad hair).

But I do have some other background info about Jansson, other than being the mum for the moomins empire. She was born to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland in the early 1900s, studied in Stockholm and Paris, then settled back to Finland. The moomins were a huge hit as soon as they appeared in an artistic Swedish-speaking magazine. Most of her life she lived with her wife/girlfriend (not sure how the legalities went back then, so just call it partner) in a small island not unlike the one in this book. And this book was something she wrote in 1972, when her own mother died.

What is neatly captured in this book is the atmosphere of a small island in 1972. And the bond and non-adventures of a 6-year old Sophia and her grandma. I've always been fond of small (and big) islands.

But there are moments I wanted to smack mostly Sophia. The way Sophia behaves with the cats, the way she's nitpicking with every damn and christ used as an exclamation, when dictating her story... Yes, mostly when she's behaving childish. (I'm one of those people who doesn't like children, and who hated being one. So I didn't like that type of childishness even when I was Sophia's age). Overall OK read, fast, fine for summer or as a quick break from the more serious reads. At least there are no moomins in this book.(less)

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Jun 20, 2011 Jean rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction

I haven't read a "grown-up" book in ages, but this quietly reflective and sometimes stewing contemplation on life at a summer cabin, lured me in. I hoped to get a glimpse into ripples of author Tove Jansson's own bohemian-influenced life, as she had previously been known to me only as the creator of the famous Moomintrolls, whose radical whimsy I adore.
This is quite a departure from whimsy, yet felt genuine and satisfying to me. The Summer Book captures how life on a small island is terribly cl...more

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Mar 30, 2011 Rachel Brand rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I ended up enjoying this book a lot more than I expected. While there was no real, overarching plot I loved reading all of the little episodes about Sophia and her grandmother's adventures. Tove really captures the beauty of childhood and several of Sophie's profound statements about life actually made me laugh out loud. In places it was sad to see how frail the grandmother was growing, without Sophia really understanding. Despite there being no real conclusion, I felt that the characters had gr...more

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Nov 06, 2010 teresa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Tove Jansson is a Finnish author known best for her series of children's books about the Moomins. This book was written later in her life after the death of her mother. The book is a collection of vignettes about an elderly grandmother who knows she is not long for this world and her granddaughter whose mother has died not too long ago. It is about their summer spent on the family cottage on a remote Finnish island. It is not told in the American way a la Mitch Albom and that lot--cute little se...more

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Dec 27, 2009 Eddie Watkins rated it 4 of 5 stars

A novel masquerading as a series of vignettes that subtly and cumulatively evoke what Summer means to a 6 year old girl who spends every day in one form of imaginative play or another with her grandmother (who's enjoying something of a new birth as she nears the end of her life). Her days are spent on a virtually uninhabited island in the gulf of Finland at a summer house the family returns to year after year, and the stories are dotted with botanical and daily life specifics (such as tossing al...more

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Jun 23, 2011 Kathleen Hulser rated it 4 of 5 stars

Exquisite. A child and her grandmother, unsentimental and astringent. The pair are as scoured as the tiny Finnish island on which they summer. The tiniest details assume epic proportions. The return of crushed mosses, driftwood collected, fireworks deferred, the visit of a taciturn neighbor. Who could resist the grandmother who breaks the lock on the McMansion of someone who has spoiled the view with his fantasy house on an adjacent island. Or the octogenarian who pauses in her rambles to light...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Kinga rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A six-year old girl spends the summers with her grandmother on a small island in the gulf of Finland. The girl's father is there, too, but he's mainly working and a background character. The relationship is not a kissy-huggy one. The grandmother is quite caustic at times and Sophie seems to shout a lot, but I imagine she shouts in the way that children shout: as a form of communication. The beauty of the book is the language and the pace of the plot. Each chapter describes an event during one of...more

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The Perks of Bein...: 'The Summer Book' by Tove Jansson (Laurel & Kirsty)	8	12	May 30, 2013 02:37am
Why does Sophia end up with Moppy at the end even though he did nothing?	1	31	Feb 23, 2009 01:11pm

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Moominland Tales: The Life of Tove Jansson (BBC Scotland)

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About Tove Jansson

Tove 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...more

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Books by Tove Jansson

Finn Family Moomintroll (The Moomins, #3)

The Moomins and the Great Flood (The Moomins, #1)

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Quotes from The Summer Book

“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.” — 31 people liked it

“Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you're looking for. If you're picking raspberries, you see only what's red, and if you're looking for bones you see only the white. No matter where you go, the only thing you see is bones.” — 19 people liked it

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