What do you think?
Rate this book
Sun City
From the author of The Summer Book and creator of the Moomins, an off-beat novel about a retirement community in sunny Florida.
In The Summer Book and The True Deceiver, as in her many short stories, Tove Jansson was drawn again and again to the everyday life of the aged. Not as a group apart but as full-blooded people with as many jealousies, urges, and joys as any other group. It’s no wonder that in her travels through America in the 1970s she became fascinated with what was then a particularly American institution, the retirement home, where older people live in their particular tightly knit worlds.
In Sun City, Jansson depicts these worlds in a group portrait of residents and employees at the Berkeley Arms in St. Petersburg, Florida. As the narrative moves from character to character, so the characters move through an America riven by cultural divides, facing the death of its dream. The Berkeley Arms’s newest resident finds a place among the rocking chairs and endless chatter on the veranda, while other residents long for past glories, mourning their losses and killing time. Meanwhile one of their attendants, Bounty Joe, is eagerly awaiting a letter, or even just a postcard, alerting him to the imminent return of Jesus Christ. “Nobody’s normal anymore,” as the bartender says, “not the old geezers and not the newborn kids.”
In The Summer Book and The True Deceiver, as in her many short stories, Tove Jansson was drawn again and again to the everyday life of the aged. Not as a group apart but as full-blooded people with as many jealousies, urges, and joys as any other group. It’s no wonder that in her travels through America in the 1970s she became fascinated with what was then a particularly American institution, the retirement home, where older people live in their particular tightly knit worlds.
In Sun City, Jansson depicts these worlds in a group portrait of residents and employees at the Berkeley Arms in St. Petersburg, Florida. As the narrative moves from character to character, so the characters move through an America riven by cultural divides, facing the death of its dream. The Berkeley Arms’s newest resident finds a place among the rocking chairs and endless chatter on the veranda, while other residents long for past glories, mourning their losses and killing time. Meanwhile one of their attendants, Bounty Joe, is eagerly awaiting a letter, or even just a postcard, alerting him to the imminent return of Jesus Christ. “Nobody’s normal anymore,” as the bartender says, “not the old geezers and not the newborn kids.”
214 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
91 people are currently reading
1405 people want to read
About the author
Tove Jansson
877 books3,866 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews
June 27, 2010
I've always wondered why more books weren't written about the elderly, yet so many books are written about the young. Maybe we can all look back on youth, but we don't know much about being old. Maybe we only want to write about being old when we're old, and when we get to be old, we're too tired to write about it. Or maybe being old is too depressing and boring while being young is romantic and idealized. Or maybe these books are being written, but are just not very marketable or "sexy" so you never hear about them.
In any case, if you're interested in insightful, entertaining fiction about the elderly, you really can't do much better than this book (which was written by Jansson when she herself was relatively old, I think). It is sad and funny and intensely moving. If you've read The Summer Book, the only other Jansson book for adults that I've read, and one that's much more popularly read than this one, then you can expect some of the same elements--the episodic nature of the novel (though there is more of an overall arc here, and the final chapter definitely feels like the end of a novel), the simple yet powerful language, the personalities that are very much alive. In fact, this book is just as good as The Summer Book, if not slightly better, and it's sad that it's so overlooked.
Jansson writes about a retirement community in St. Petersburg Florida: the cast of characters are all unique and they all get on each other's nerves in different ways, though they do seem to enjoy it in a strange comforting way. The sadness in this book is very rarely explicit, but skillfully woven inside of the humor and the stories and the mood--there is a general sense of futility, of aimlessness, of the silliness of busy youth contrasted with the emptiness of age.
This book is now sadly out of print. If it weren't for my trusty public library, I would not have read it. I hope some publisher like NYRB Classics (hint, hint) will bring it back into print.
Some quotes:
In any case, if you're interested in insightful, entertaining fiction about the elderly, you really can't do much better than this book (which was written by Jansson when she herself was relatively old, I think). It is sad and funny and intensely moving. If you've read The Summer Book, the only other Jansson book for adults that I've read, and one that's much more popularly read than this one, then you can expect some of the same elements--the episodic nature of the novel (though there is more of an overall arc here, and the final chapter definitely feels like the end of a novel), the simple yet powerful language, the personalities that are very much alive. In fact, this book is just as good as The Summer Book, if not slightly better, and it's sad that it's so overlooked.
Jansson writes about a retirement community in St. Petersburg Florida: the cast of characters are all unique and they all get on each other's nerves in different ways, though they do seem to enjoy it in a strange comforting way. The sadness in this book is very rarely explicit, but skillfully woven inside of the humor and the stories and the mood--there is a general sense of futility, of aimlessness, of the silliness of busy youth contrasted with the emptiness of age.
This book is now sadly out of print. If it weren't for my trusty public library, I would not have read it. I hope some publisher like NYRB Classics (hint, hint) will bring it back into print.
Some quotes:
It was possible that the strictly frontal placement of the rocking chairs, parallel to each other and facing straight ahead, was the only practical arrangement. It is probably difficult, thought Mrs. Morris, to place rocking chairs in groups, that is, rocking toward each other. It would take a great deal of space, and in the long run it might be tiresome. Of course the original, the natural idea was a single rocking chair in motion in an otherwise static room. p. 9
She forgot to mention fear of her room--the room you leave open behind you can be full of pitiful carelessness. You have to hide away the signs and appurtenances of old age, small anesthetic oversights, all the supporting constructions of helplessness, so unnoticed and so obvious. p.10
Dear Madonna, Linda whispered, let me make love to Joe on the banks of the jungle river. And then by your grace we will wade out into the water and swim slowly away together, farther and farther away. She reached up and switched on the Madonna's lamp, not for the light but to pay respect. Then she folded her hands on her lovely stomach and fell asleep. p 22
Because Mr. Thompson was a woman hater, he thought about women a lot. p. 26
I begin to believe that a person really can die from such a thing as grief. Our predicament, Miss Frey, is that that means of making an exit is no longer open to us. Grief, Miss Frey, is very pure and strong, and it requires a great love. It is not the same as being unhappy. p. 74
Tim Tellerton knew that nothing could be squandered as easily as beauty. It was seldom esteemed at its full value while it stood in bloom, and later on it was preserved at the expense of far too much trouble and despair. p. 138
What was a conversation, and what could it mean? Mutual consideration of important things. Communication of experience and memory. Construction of possibilities for the future. To clarify and recognize together, and to observe the changes in a glance, a tone of voice, a silence--the silence of hesitation or understanding. To shape without altering. To laugh, or to sit quietly in common shyness that was never expressed. p. 160
Since Miss Frey, like most people, took slightly longer steps with her right leg than with her left, she moved in a large circle that eventually brought her back toward Silver Springs. p. 209
Read
February 22, 2025In a one-page introduction, Tove Jansson wrote that she was traveling "through America, through Florida, and came one night to a city that was completely silent." The next morning she saw open porches "with long rows of rocking chairs, all turned toward the street." It was, she said, a "sun city", where the elderly migrated, those who could, where "sun is guaranteed year round."
Jansson wrote that stage, verandas with rockers, and filled it with an ensemble cast. I have tried to write a book about becoming old. As in life, this cast of seniors is mostly women, although Mr. Thompson, who is not as deaf as he pretends, does provide some spice. Women! thought Thompson.
The characters are revealed, in pieces, shuffling vignettes. Who knew Mrs. Morris played the piano so brilliantly? And when Mrs. Thompson arrives - having tracked her husband for eighteen years - Mr. Thompson finally puts his hearing aid in, and now cannot hear a thing.
There are cameos, too. A tall man, McKenzie, who is from "Scotland, Europe", stops in when he hears Mrs. Morris playing. She begins a Scottish ballad, and he accompanies her, one octave higher. The song was very long and the words were pretty--mostly about heaths and fogs and sails that never returned. I think I know such sails.
I think I know, too, that old ones can spout wisdom. Such as:
-- she thought fleetingly of how often it seems to be the case that compassion derives from guilt and gives rise to contempt.
And:
-- As far as I can see there's only one thing to worry about, and that's not to scare people when you die, and not to give them a bad conscience. Considering what a spectacle we make of ourselves while we're alive, we might at least try to achieve some dignity when the whole thing's over.
In that Intro I mentioned, Jansson said she wanted to include a young couple, the young man waiting for Jesus to come. She said she had observed that - the Jesus movement of the young - along with the silent porches. And she did write them in. That didn't work for me, and diminished the book as a whole. But I loved other Moments.
My favorite was a letter Mrs. Rubenstein wrote in reply to her son, who meticulously wrote to her on one of the first three days of each month. Her reply begins: My dreadful son. We are very like one another, although you did not inherit my intelligence in the broad sense of the word. . . .
Jansson wrote that stage, verandas with rockers, and filled it with an ensemble cast. I have tried to write a book about becoming old. As in life, this cast of seniors is mostly women, although Mr. Thompson, who is not as deaf as he pretends, does provide some spice. Women! thought Thompson.
The characters are revealed, in pieces, shuffling vignettes. Who knew Mrs. Morris played the piano so brilliantly? And when Mrs. Thompson arrives - having tracked her husband for eighteen years - Mr. Thompson finally puts his hearing aid in, and now cannot hear a thing.
There are cameos, too. A tall man, McKenzie, who is from "Scotland, Europe", stops in when he hears Mrs. Morris playing. She begins a Scottish ballad, and he accompanies her, one octave higher. The song was very long and the words were pretty--mostly about heaths and fogs and sails that never returned. I think I know such sails.
I think I know, too, that old ones can spout wisdom. Such as:
-- she thought fleetingly of how often it seems to be the case that compassion derives from guilt and gives rise to contempt.
And:
-- As far as I can see there's only one thing to worry about, and that's not to scare people when you die, and not to give them a bad conscience. Considering what a spectacle we make of ourselves while we're alive, we might at least try to achieve some dignity when the whole thing's over.
In that Intro I mentioned, Jansson said she wanted to include a young couple, the young man waiting for Jesus to come. She said she had observed that - the Jesus movement of the young - along with the silent porches. And she did write them in. That didn't work for me, and diminished the book as a whole. But I loved other Moments.
My favorite was a letter Mrs. Rubenstein wrote in reply to her son, who meticulously wrote to her on one of the first three days of each month. Her reply begins: My dreadful son. We are very like one another, although you did not inherit my intelligence in the broad sense of the word. . . .
January 26, 2022
En bok om massor av gamlingar. Inget händer och allt är oklart.
June 20, 2025
"There are more hairdressers in St. Petersburg than anywhere else in the country, and they are specialists at creating airy little puffs of thin white hair," so Tove Jansson begins her whimsical description of Florida's waterfront city—a sprawling beach town of porches and rocking chairs and elderly retirees, a sunny paradise just opposite the bay from the more metropolitan Tampa. Jansson's novel offers a hilarious portrait of eccentric octogenarians, all housed together at a home called the Berkeley Arms: there's Evelyn Peabody, the desperately clingy misfit chasing after friendship and men like some insecure teenager; there's Elizabeth Morris, a witty pianist who communicates with people by handwritten notes, preferring the philosophical company inside her head (one of my favorite lines of hers: "I don't believe there are so many things to be afraid of. Nebraska, maybe, and confidences, and certain kinds of music, but not death. Not death, that isn't important, and making an impression on people, that isn't important either"); there's Mrs Rubinstein, who writes scathing tirades to her son and then tears them up, and bullies her neighbors with devastatingly acerbic remarks; there's Mr Thompson, a man who had absconded from his wife for eighteen years, who pretends to be deaf to avoid conversation, and is a casual misogynist ("because Mr. Thompson was a woman hater, he thought about women a lot...The subject Thompson had chosen for today's meditation was: epithets worthy of woman"); and then there's Tim Tellerton, an erstwhile TV celebrity whom all the women swoon over but who is more interested in a younger man called Bounty Joe—the residential attendant with a monkey cage and a loud motorcycle, a religious zealot hoping to get a letter from "the Jesus people in Miami" who told him that Christ is about to return. Tim just likes to watch him dive and tease him when he gets out of the pool.
It reminded me of the sitcom The Golden Girls, another comedy about retirees who are still very much in the throes of life, foolish, prurient, sharp-tongued, grandmothers in theory but still women about town. In Jansson's novel, their antics are even more exaggerated. They drink beers, they have crushes, they play pranks on one another, they get frightened at the beach, they almost burn down the house, they bicker about the rules at the local dance club, they get lost in a jungle. "People are so peculiar, and getting older doesn't make them any better," Mrs Morris reflects to herself. The characters in the novel become hyperbolic caricatures. Two of the residents, sisters, die on the same day, and the rest of the renters are unfazed; they just argue about what books the women had returned to the library before dying. Old age doesn't bring any high-minded maturity but just enlarges their foibles, their vanity and their pettiness. When Mrs Rubinstein receives a letter from her son with the same trite messages about the grandchildren and his life, she composes a letter of outrage, craving novelty and not these meaningless platitudes and hollow sentiments ("Give me proof that my grandchild is a genius and not just a curly-headed darling who torments your guests with uninteresting accomplishments. Tell me clearly, in dollars and cents, how the business is doing.") The residents are petulant, ill-tempered and rancorous—but they are full of life and passion.
It's not a plot-heavy novel, more a series of vignettes, and very skittish overall. Humorous in some parts, dreamlike and cerebral in others. A fascinating ethnography of Florida from the perspective of a Finnish interloper.
It reminded me of the sitcom The Golden Girls, another comedy about retirees who are still very much in the throes of life, foolish, prurient, sharp-tongued, grandmothers in theory but still women about town. In Jansson's novel, their antics are even more exaggerated. They drink beers, they have crushes, they play pranks on one another, they get frightened at the beach, they almost burn down the house, they bicker about the rules at the local dance club, they get lost in a jungle. "People are so peculiar, and getting older doesn't make them any better," Mrs Morris reflects to herself. The characters in the novel become hyperbolic caricatures. Two of the residents, sisters, die on the same day, and the rest of the renters are unfazed; they just argue about what books the women had returned to the library before dying. Old age doesn't bring any high-minded maturity but just enlarges their foibles, their vanity and their pettiness. When Mrs Rubinstein receives a letter from her son with the same trite messages about the grandchildren and his life, she composes a letter of outrage, craving novelty and not these meaningless platitudes and hollow sentiments ("Give me proof that my grandchild is a genius and not just a curly-headed darling who torments your guests with uninteresting accomplishments. Tell me clearly, in dollars and cents, how the business is doing.") The residents are petulant, ill-tempered and rancorous—but they are full of life and passion.
It's not a plot-heavy novel, more a series of vignettes, and very skittish overall. Humorous in some parts, dreamlike and cerebral in others. A fascinating ethnography of Florida from the perspective of a Finnish interloper.
January 4, 2013
Tove Jansson is one of my favourite writers, because she is wild, dreamy, flinty, and if her novels are to be believed, sensibly unafraid of all people, and completely unconcerned about their thoughts and judgements. She seems to be a mad, sweet loner, a people-watching misanthrope, who loved and tried to understand the individuals who bothered to approach her.
Jansson was a Fenno-Swede, meaning she was part of a Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. White on white in a translucent wonderland, right?
Regardless of whether subtle distinctions inform her work, she's most well-known for her children's novels and comics about a family of hippopotamus-like creatures called Moomins, which is an international cartoon brand on par with Barapapa.
Later in life, Jansson wrote a series of novels, ostensibly for adults. I like these more, since her singular voice, full of gentle harshness, is more direct. It is the same voice, but without a gloss for children. In her adult novels, she calmly observes more absurdity, more madness, and more people behaving in very irrational but typical modes, unmediated by the sweetness of cartoon figments.
Sun City centers around a retirement home in St. Petersburg, Florida. Of all places, a Fenno-swede decided to write about my university town! I knew it was a book about the elderly, but the setting really surprised me. At the liberal arts school I attended, there were retirement homes and senior condominiums nearby, some with overlapping economic interests, board members, and nebulous but vaguely shady though clearly contractual links to the college. Certain famous though obscure people retired to these places. I remember Peter Handke's name adorned plaques and symposia materials around the college. Though I never did see him in person, it was clear that he was a resident nearby, and to stave off boredom, he occasionally came over to participate in academic matters as some sort of unofficial writer emeritus. In another such exchange, a friend and I had dinner with a retired Broadway actress. She'd married old money and settled nearby and liked to regale college students with stories of transatlantic New York City, using "cookie" as a term of endearment for everyone.
Sun City reminded me of these strange but genuine undercurrents that run between the main population of retirees and everyone else in Florida coastal towns. How the Florida coast is God's waiting room. How all sorts of people from everywhere shed their once-glamorous skins or sell off their businesses, and since they can't afford California living or are just too weird for that other sunny state, they rock in rocking chairs, passing the rest of their time in Florida. The book is a collection of some such retirees, living together, and gently tormenting one another with their opposing quirks. There's even a once-famous character, much like the old Broadway star, milling among the philistines of his generation, polite, patient, and completely forgotten. Did Jansson at one time occupy this role as a strange, wild-eyed Nordic retiree who did something vaguely fantastic but obscure, known to no one in a land of sunny forgetfulness? Or maybe she was a tourist, visiting friends. Either way, she accurately captures this milieu.
Jansson was a Fenno-Swede, meaning she was part of a Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. White on white in a translucent wonderland, right?
Regardless of whether subtle distinctions inform her work, she's most well-known for her children's novels and comics about a family of hippopotamus-like creatures called Moomins, which is an international cartoon brand on par with Barapapa.
Later in life, Jansson wrote a series of novels, ostensibly for adults. I like these more, since her singular voice, full of gentle harshness, is more direct. It is the same voice, but without a gloss for children. In her adult novels, she calmly observes more absurdity, more madness, and more people behaving in very irrational but typical modes, unmediated by the sweetness of cartoon figments.
Sun City centers around a retirement home in St. Petersburg, Florida. Of all places, a Fenno-swede decided to write about my university town! I knew it was a book about the elderly, but the setting really surprised me. At the liberal arts school I attended, there were retirement homes and senior condominiums nearby, some with overlapping economic interests, board members, and nebulous but vaguely shady though clearly contractual links to the college. Certain famous though obscure people retired to these places. I remember Peter Handke's name adorned plaques and symposia materials around the college. Though I never did see him in person, it was clear that he was a resident nearby, and to stave off boredom, he occasionally came over to participate in academic matters as some sort of unofficial writer emeritus. In another such exchange, a friend and I had dinner with a retired Broadway actress. She'd married old money and settled nearby and liked to regale college students with stories of transatlantic New York City, using "cookie" as a term of endearment for everyone.
Sun City reminded me of these strange but genuine undercurrents that run between the main population of retirees and everyone else in Florida coastal towns. How the Florida coast is God's waiting room. How all sorts of people from everywhere shed their once-glamorous skins or sell off their businesses, and since they can't afford California living or are just too weird for that other sunny state, they rock in rocking chairs, passing the rest of their time in Florida. The book is a collection of some such retirees, living together, and gently tormenting one another with their opposing quirks. There's even a once-famous character, much like the old Broadway star, milling among the philistines of his generation, polite, patient, and completely forgotten. Did Jansson at one time occupy this role as a strange, wild-eyed Nordic retiree who did something vaguely fantastic but obscure, known to no one in a land of sunny forgetfulness? Or maybe she was a tourist, visiting friends. Either way, she accurately captures this milieu.
July 31, 2014
I'd like to help him but everything's become so difficult to explain, the things I say are neither accepted or dismissed, they're just something an old person said.
When Tove Jansson visited the US in the early 70s she saw a Florida retirement community and was astonished by it; an entire holiday resort where old people come to conserve whatever life they have left in a place where sunshine was guaranteed and the outside world wouldn't intrude. The Saint Petersburg she sets Sun City in isn't the real Saint Petersburg, FL, anymore than Moominvalley is the real countryside outside Helsinki; it feels more like a dream, like life suspended while waiting for the inevitable. The old women and men in the retirement home, carefully weighing their words to try and forge some sort of connection to the others (or avoid it, in some cases) without breaking the illusion that everything is perfect, are contrasted by Bounty Joe, one of the few young people around, who missed out on the hippie era and now only hopes for confirmation that Jesus is returning so he won't have to grow up.
Jansson's prose is beautiful as always, and the way she sketches characters more by what they don't say or remember than what they do, as if they've spent their lives walking on eggshells and can't bear to break them now. (Two characters are strongly hinted to be gay, as Jansson was and had to keep an open secret for years.) At the same time, while I don't really mind that the plot feels sort of non-existent, there's something about the setting that just feels ... off. I don't know if it's just that Jansson's experience with America is only barely more substantial than Kafka's was, or if it's deliberate to emphasize how artificial this sort of community comes across to an outsider.
Sleep is a blessing you can meet in many different ways.
When Tove Jansson visited the US in the early 70s she saw a Florida retirement community and was astonished by it; an entire holiday resort where old people come to conserve whatever life they have left in a place where sunshine was guaranteed and the outside world wouldn't intrude. The Saint Petersburg she sets Sun City in isn't the real Saint Petersburg, FL, anymore than Moominvalley is the real countryside outside Helsinki; it feels more like a dream, like life suspended while waiting for the inevitable. The old women and men in the retirement home, carefully weighing their words to try and forge some sort of connection to the others (or avoid it, in some cases) without breaking the illusion that everything is perfect, are contrasted by Bounty Joe, one of the few young people around, who missed out on the hippie era and now only hopes for confirmation that Jesus is returning so he won't have to grow up.
Jansson's prose is beautiful as always, and the way she sketches characters more by what they don't say or remember than what they do, as if they've spent their lives walking on eggshells and can't bear to break them now. (Two characters are strongly hinted to be gay, as Jansson was and had to keep an open secret for years.) At the same time, while I don't really mind that the plot feels sort of non-existent, there's something about the setting that just feels ... off. I don't know if it's just that Jansson's experience with America is only barely more substantial than Kafka's was, or if it's deliberate to emphasize how artificial this sort of community comes across to an outsider.
Sleep is a blessing you can meet in many different ways.
August 31, 2025
#swedishtranslation
"They asked her what she was going to buy and she cried, "Sunshine! Sunshine! A room of my very own!"
I am definitely an old soul, I would love to grow old ( ya considering my brain & muscles are still working)
And the things I have imagined myself doing or the way I have imagined myself to be when I grow old would very much be like that of some of the residents of retirement community known as Berkeley Arms, in St. Petersburg, Florida
⭐ Let's say I would love to
- write mean letters to my kids 😎 (like Mrs Rubenstein) & send them too ( which she doesn't)😂
- be a complete badass & read all sorts of books but cover up the front page to make everyone die with curiosity 😅(like Pihalga sisters) & ya all this while sitting on rocking chair
- act deaf (like Mr. Thompson)🥳 & say whatever I want & still get away with it
- act mute (like Mrs Morris)🙃 & avoid all the banalities of conversations
⭐ and then definitely not to be
- overtly nice & courteous ( like Miss Peabody & play power games with the much younger manager of Berkeley arms, Miss Frey)🥴
- not play pickleball and think of old age as "God's waiting room for heaven" ( like Barbara)😵💫
Fun apart, this book is a collection of vignettes, laden with dark humor, sarcasm, immaculate witticism but underneath it carries the heavy baggage of loneliness, sadness & tiredness, much like how old age is
"The sisters were terribly and patently old, not so much in years as in their apparent unconcern at the passage of time and at the fact that it might stop. Their appearance and their silence were reminders"
Other than The Summer Book, this is the only other book of Jansson that's written from perspective of older people
While the book is talked about as a cultural commentary on 'American way of getting old', but I wonder how different old age can be in any other country
Thomas Teal’s translation is well done
A thorough entertainer which you need to take with a pinch of salt. I definitely can't recommend it enough
Read It
"They asked her what she was going to buy and she cried, "Sunshine! Sunshine! A room of my very own!"
I am definitely an old soul, I would love to grow old ( ya considering my brain & muscles are still working)
And the things I have imagined myself doing or the way I have imagined myself to be when I grow old would very much be like that of some of the residents of retirement community known as Berkeley Arms, in St. Petersburg, Florida
⭐ Let's say I would love to
- write mean letters to my kids 😎 (like Mrs Rubenstein) & send them too ( which she doesn't)😂
- be a complete badass & read all sorts of books but cover up the front page to make everyone die with curiosity 😅(like Pihalga sisters) & ya all this while sitting on rocking chair
- act deaf (like Mr. Thompson)🥳 & say whatever I want & still get away with it
- act mute (like Mrs Morris)🙃 & avoid all the banalities of conversations
⭐ and then definitely not to be
- overtly nice & courteous ( like Miss Peabody & play power games with the much younger manager of Berkeley arms, Miss Frey)🥴
- not play pickleball and think of old age as "God's waiting room for heaven" ( like Barbara)😵💫
Fun apart, this book is a collection of vignettes, laden with dark humor, sarcasm, immaculate witticism but underneath it carries the heavy baggage of loneliness, sadness & tiredness, much like how old age is
"The sisters were terribly and patently old, not so much in years as in their apparent unconcern at the passage of time and at the fact that it might stop. Their appearance and their silence were reminders"
Other than The Summer Book, this is the only other book of Jansson that's written from perspective of older people
While the book is talked about as a cultural commentary on 'American way of getting old', but I wonder how different old age can be in any other country
Thomas Teal’s translation is well done
A thorough entertainer which you need to take with a pinch of salt. I definitely can't recommend it enough
Read It
July 16, 2017
I feel a little guilty giving one star...it wasn't terrible, but it just wasn't good enough to warrant my reading time when I have stacks of books that also interest me. It's a short novel, but 1/4 of the way in and I felt relieved putting it down.
I was excited when I picked this up at the library discard table as I absolutely loved her Summer Book. The writing was solid in this one, and perhaps I should have given it a little more time, but I kept thinking I should re-read Muriel Spark's Memento Mori instead.
I was excited when I picked this up at the library discard table as I absolutely loved her Summer Book. The writing was solid in this one, and perhaps I should have given it a little more time, but I kept thinking I should re-read Muriel Spark's Memento Mori instead.
July 17, 2025
“Considering what a spectacle we make of ourselves while we're alive, we might at least try to achieve some dignity when the whole thing's over.”
January 27, 2013
Like Cannery Row, but with old white people.
June 24, 2025
love me some Jansson of course. didn’t blow me away but i liked the vibe, perfect for summer
September 9, 2021
Lite snålt, men handlar om äldre som väntar på å dö. För nära min begynnande ålderskris, tror jag.
June 24, 2025
This was awesome. Read while camping with Charlie and it was the perfect book for the trip. The residents of the Berkeley Arms are very much alive despite what they may have imagined 70+ to look like when younger. This realization causes a vast array of reactions, new philosophies...and so much beef!!! Tove Jansson is hilarious while still maintaining complete compassion with her characters which I feel when depicting the elderly can become patronizing or pitying so easily. It's interesting to think about living such a full life but to only be perceived as you are at a certain moment in your life, which is what these characters experience. Anyways, loved this and would reread!
December 5, 2024
En tiedä miksi Jansson on sijoittanut tapahtumat Yhdysvaltoihin, mutta ehkä se on ollut sen ajan muotia kirjallisuudessa. Siitä huolimatta hän on ihan maailmanluokan kirjailijakin tämän näytteen perusteella. Jotain Hemingwaylaista, hyvällä tavalla, on tässä tekstissä, dialogissa, henkilöiden esiin häivähtävissä piirteissä. Todella ehjä ja loppuun asti kantava kokonaisuus.
March 16, 2025
The late, great Tove Jansson is one of my favorite authors. This book is unusual, in that it is set in Florida in the 1970s, rather than in her home country of Finland, unlike all her other books. This book is about the residents of a home for the elderly, and that's all I knew going in. The book is not what I was expecting, but that makes sense, because how would I have any way of knowing what to expect from a Finnish author writing about Florida?
I first became interested in Tove Jansson because of her Moomin books, which are wonderful. But then New York Review books published a translation of one of her novels for adults, The Summer Book, and it was really beautiful. The NYRB editions of her books kept coming, and I keep reading. So when I saw that they were publishing this book, I figured, why stop now? So I popped into my local independent bookstore and bought a copy the other day, and the book is so strange and beautiful (and did I mention strange?), I'm glad I didn't wait around. Highly recommended!
I first became interested in Tove Jansson because of her Moomin books, which are wonderful. But then New York Review books published a translation of one of her novels for adults, The Summer Book, and it was really beautiful. The NYRB editions of her books kept coming, and I keep reading. So when I saw that they were publishing this book, I figured, why stop now? So I popped into my local independent bookstore and bought a copy the other day, and the book is so strange and beautiful (and did I mention strange?), I'm glad I didn't wait around. Highly recommended!
August 20, 2019
A sombre tale of growing old, told from the point of view of the residents in one of the many senior boarding houses in Florida.
Tove Jansson published this book when she herself turned 60 so you can see it as her own reflections of aging and slowly fading away in a place removed from the real world's hustle and bustle.
Because that's exactly what you get the feeling of when reading about this little Florida town, a waiting room for the soon to be dead. The old people all have great inner conflicts and we get to hear all of it, the most striking feeling you get is how fragile their sense of themselves are. You want to imagine yourself being sure of who you are when you've lived with yourself for eighty years, but in this novel that is not a certainty at all.
The characters are all interesting with distinct personalities. The arguments they have with each other can turn from hilarious to tragic in a heartbeat, and you get easily invested in everyone's small personal journey.
I would've liked the story to focus more on a couple of characters I found to be the more interesting ones'. After a while you get a little disappointed every time the story turns focus on one of the less captivating characters.
Sun City is a tragically comic tale of aging told from the point of view of a great aging author. A horror story about retirement, and a reminder that a warm and sunny place can still feel cold.
Tove Jansson published this book when she herself turned 60 so you can see it as her own reflections of aging and slowly fading away in a place removed from the real world's hustle and bustle.
Because that's exactly what you get the feeling of when reading about this little Florida town, a waiting room for the soon to be dead. The old people all have great inner conflicts and we get to hear all of it, the most striking feeling you get is how fragile their sense of themselves are. You want to imagine yourself being sure of who you are when you've lived with yourself for eighty years, but in this novel that is not a certainty at all.
The characters are all interesting with distinct personalities. The arguments they have with each other can turn from hilarious to tragic in a heartbeat, and you get easily invested in everyone's small personal journey.
I would've liked the story to focus more on a couple of characters I found to be the more interesting ones'. After a while you get a little disappointed every time the story turns focus on one of the less captivating characters.
Sun City is a tragically comic tale of aging told from the point of view of a great aging author. A horror story about retirement, and a reminder that a warm and sunny place can still feel cold.
December 31, 2018
Sun city is a constructed paradise in California where old people go to live out the last days of their life, although perhaps it is more of a hell. Because it turns out that old people are still spiteful, still envious, still petty and still scheming. Tove Jansson is, as always, fearless in her writing. I know of no other author who writes like her, who constructs a novel like she does: the plot does not exactly unfold, but is told in anecdotes that sometimes seem to have no destination, but once the book is finished you realise that you have read something complete and quietly beautiful.
June 19, 2012
Such an interesting novel - set not in Jansson's usual haunts but in St. Peterberg, Florida! Focusing on the lives of the residents at a old age home, Jansson, as always, brings her wonderful ability to chronicle the intricacies of human relationships in this poignant yet funny novel. Her second novel for adults, it isn't The Summer Book - my favourite of her adult works - but it is delightfully quirky and a real must for Jansson fans!
May 17, 2025
I wea really looking forward to reading this book. Forced myself to finish it. Glad I never need to read another book by Tove. Old people are the same all over the world and the same whether it is 1974 or 2025. Disjoined conversations, forgetfulness, long memories, death. It’s like Tove went from room to room at a nursing home and picked up parts of conversations then strung them all together over period of a few days. Not my favorite writing style.
March 27, 2021
Förväntade mig att ta mig igenom denna på en dag, men var tyvärr så uttråkad genom alla 170 sidor att jag inte kunde läsa så mycket åt gången. Kände inte suget att fortsätta läsa när jag la ner den, det tog mig tre dagar att ta mig igenom denna bok.
March 23, 2025
A not unpleasant elderly hangout novel.
August 21, 2025
hmmmm this one i had a harder time getting into than previous book club books but i still throughly enjoyed it. there is something timeless about this book — a sense of aimlessness and a flare of the dramatics that don’t
go away just because you age. it kind of reminds me of John-Paul Satre’s « No Exit » if it was set in a retirement home. i think all this book was missing was a couple of old farts sleeping together and contracting an STD — as i’ve heard can be such the case in homes.
« What was a conversation, and what could it mean? Mutual consideration of important things. Communication of experience and memory. Construction of possibilities for the future. To clarify and recognize together, and to observe the changes in a glance, a tone of voice, a silence—the silence of hesitation or understanding. To shape without altering. To laugh, or to sit quietly in common shyness that was never expressed? » (160).
Do we not often write about being old because we’re afraid of mortality or because we love to romanticize our youth? I think a little bit of both — the latter being exacerbated in our increasingly consumerist society where « new is often better » but i think we, as children, fail to recognize just because our parents are older does not mean the aren’t equally just as lost.
go away just because you age. it kind of reminds me of John-Paul Satre’s « No Exit » if it was set in a retirement home. i think all this book was missing was a couple of old farts sleeping together and contracting an STD — as i’ve heard can be such the case in homes.
« What was a conversation, and what could it mean? Mutual consideration of important things. Communication of experience and memory. Construction of possibilities for the future. To clarify and recognize together, and to observe the changes in a glance, a tone of voice, a silence—the silence of hesitation or understanding. To shape without altering. To laugh, or to sit quietly in common shyness that was never expressed? » (160).
Do we not often write about being old because we’re afraid of mortality or because we love to romanticize our youth? I think a little bit of both — the latter being exacerbated in our increasingly consumerist society where « new is often better » but i think we, as children, fail to recognize just because our parents are older does not mean the aren’t equally just as lost.
September 19, 2025
Retirement, deodorised. Apply twice daily.
Sunlight is the literature of falsity in SUN CITY—a municipal radiance that blinds more than it illuminates, a Florida fluorescence so hygienic, so perpetually dispassionate, that it sterilises death itself, erases its odour, embalms it in formaldehyde rituals like the Cotillion or the Cavalcade of Hats, where the residents dance in categories—waltz, cha-cha, foxtrot—and women are paraded in feathered headdresses as their bodies edge toward decomposition; these are the banal grotesqueries of seniority by which the elderly perform their own evaporation under ceiling fans and polite silences, and where transcendence—be it through religion, music, or erotic fantasy—dissolves into parody before it can even flinch.
It’s not that nothing happens, but that nothingness itself happens, always and with insistence, like a community bulletin board covered in notices of cancelled events or postponed dreams. Tove Jansson constructs a world whose primary phenomenon is inertia disguised as civility, and whose primary affliction is a spiritual petrification: a hardening of the soul into function, decorum, and mild dietary preferences; a substitution of ritual for meaning, of etiquette for communion; a condition in which even belief is domesticated—made safe, reduced to hobby or habit—and where time proceeds only as the sedimentation of minor irritations. The novel’s futility resides precisely in this: that all higher aspirations—salvation, romance, art—are processed through the same filter that manages mealtimes and community meetings, as if everything can be weathered into palatability.
Jansson reads and reminds me of a Roy Andersson film: each scene a pale tableau of human residue, the smirk of ritual without belief, the slow disintegration of bodies arranged stiffly like leftover furniture, ogling at nothing—and no one—in particular. It’s been a while since I read a novel which I feel—apologies for the phrase—‘insists upon itself’, but this insists too precisely upon itself, upon its own futility, and its precision exhausts me, the way a soundproof room might—perfectly designed to isolate, yet unbearable for the very same reason. Perhaps this is Jansson’s brilliance, to sedate the reader so effectively that one emerges from the novel anaesthetised, but I am having difficulty admiring a novel that so successfully nullifies the reader’s ability to feel.
Sunlight is the literature of falsity in SUN CITY—a municipal radiance that blinds more than it illuminates, a Florida fluorescence so hygienic, so perpetually dispassionate, that it sterilises death itself, erases its odour, embalms it in formaldehyde rituals like the Cotillion or the Cavalcade of Hats, where the residents dance in categories—waltz, cha-cha, foxtrot—and women are paraded in feathered headdresses as their bodies edge toward decomposition; these are the banal grotesqueries of seniority by which the elderly perform their own evaporation under ceiling fans and polite silences, and where transcendence—be it through religion, music, or erotic fantasy—dissolves into parody before it can even flinch.
It’s not that nothing happens, but that nothingness itself happens, always and with insistence, like a community bulletin board covered in notices of cancelled events or postponed dreams. Tove Jansson constructs a world whose primary phenomenon is inertia disguised as civility, and whose primary affliction is a spiritual petrification: a hardening of the soul into function, decorum, and mild dietary preferences; a substitution of ritual for meaning, of etiquette for communion; a condition in which even belief is domesticated—made safe, reduced to hobby or habit—and where time proceeds only as the sedimentation of minor irritations. The novel’s futility resides precisely in this: that all higher aspirations—salvation, romance, art—are processed through the same filter that manages mealtimes and community meetings, as if everything can be weathered into palatability.
Jansson reads and reminds me of a Roy Andersson film: each scene a pale tableau of human residue, the smirk of ritual without belief, the slow disintegration of bodies arranged stiffly like leftover furniture, ogling at nothing—and no one—in particular. It’s been a while since I read a novel which I feel—apologies for the phrase—‘insists upon itself’, but this insists too precisely upon itself, upon its own futility, and its precision exhausts me, the way a soundproof room might—perfectly designed to isolate, yet unbearable for the very same reason. Perhaps this is Jansson’s brilliance, to sedate the reader so effectively that one emerges from the novel anaesthetised, but I am having difficulty admiring a novel that so successfully nullifies the reader’s ability to feel.
Read
October 26, 2025Oli virkistävää lukea iäkkäiden ihmisten näkökulmasta. Hurmaavan eläviä kuvia ja hauskoja kuvauksia, mutta harmi kyllä moni hahmo jäi turhan etäiseksi. Niihin, joihin päästiin enemmän sisälle, oli kyllä ilo tutustua. Miljööstä ja tunnelmasta nautin myös.
April 19, 2019
Dåligt: brist på handling, rörigt uppbyggd.
Bra: en av få böcker med åldringar i huvudrollen, cyniskt komisk, ofta fina formuleringar, träffande personporträtt.
Bra: en av få böcker med åldringar i huvudrollen, cyniskt komisk, ofta fina formuleringar, träffande personporträtt.
July 4, 2022
Mysig, finstämd och allvarlig, så mycket Tove Jansson som en bok kan bli.
June 15, 2025
Well, this is one of those novels that drifts by you as if in a blur. It has a campy, melodramatic feel to it, more so with the author crafting a sort of microcosm of an aging, infertile world into the bucolic landscape of a quintessential North American institution, often termed popularly as 'the retirement home'. As in most of her fiction, Tove Jansson is concerned with the everyday life of the aged and invalid few, a fading world of full blooded people with their own prejudices, jealousies, urges, and joys just like the younger and trendier generation. Through the eyes of 'this institution for the aged', we get to see an America rife with cultural divides, facing the death of the American dream. There is a generous sprinkling of humor, pathos, and the usual melodrama in this novel- the kind of novel we rarely see nowadays. And reading between the lines, one senses the metaphor of the Lord being the only savior from an utilitarian world of nobodies and daydreamers- and the return of the Lord is being hearkened to in the form of a letter, or even a postcard, to be received before its imminent realisation.
April 30, 2020
En vuxenbok om att åldras. Tove janssons läsare till ha henne kvar i Mumindalen, medan hon själv vill slippa fri, utvecklas, uttrycka något mer. Denna r oman tilldrar sig i en soldränkt, halvsovande pensionärstillflykt i Florida.
Tilltalet växer fram, alltmer omisskännligt Tove Jansson. Den lilla pensionärsorten är en lika soldränkt tillflyktsort som Munindalen, lika naggad i kanten av oro, men med en mer beständig svärta. Karaktärerna är ett varierat typgalleri av egensinniga åldringar, på vandring mot solnedgången. Gamla döva Thompson fantiserar om en egen lustgård, ett eget Eden.
Som belysande kontrast finns det vackra kärleksparet Joe och Linda, de enda ungdomarna i denna 'mumifierade' stad. Men det är uppbrottets tid, ytan krakelerar. Lindas kärlek är inte nog för Joe. Han söker sig till jesusfolket i jakt på en mening med livet.
Läsaren får dock erfara att verkligheten inte är given, utan skiljer sig mellan olika karaktärers intryck, det kan inte bli annat än individuella tolkningar...
Tilltalet växer fram, alltmer omisskännligt Tove Jansson. Den lilla pensionärsorten är en lika soldränkt tillflyktsort som Munindalen, lika naggad i kanten av oro, men med en mer beständig svärta. Karaktärerna är ett varierat typgalleri av egensinniga åldringar, på vandring mot solnedgången. Gamla döva Thompson fantiserar om en egen lustgård, ett eget Eden.
Som belysande kontrast finns det vackra kärleksparet Joe och Linda, de enda ungdomarna i denna 'mumifierade' stad. Men det är uppbrottets tid, ytan krakelerar. Lindas kärlek är inte nog för Joe. Han söker sig till jesusfolket i jakt på en mening med livet.
Läsaren får dock erfara att verkligheten inte är given, utan skiljer sig mellan olika karaktärers intryck, det kan inte bli annat än individuella tolkningar...
May 24, 2017
Это была первая книга Тувы Янссон для взрослых которую я прочитала. До этого я прочитала ее биографию и. конечно же, Муми-Троллей. Я была очень удивлена, узнав, что Туве Янссон писала и для взросылх и даже была очень упешной, поэтому и захотела прочесть что-то из ее произведений. И это была первая книга, которую мне удалось достать. Возможно, мне не близка пока еше тема старости, поэтому книга не отозвалась. Так же, возможно, не был знаком период из жизни писательницы, в котором она обратилась к такой теме... Удивило то, что никто из обитателей дома престарелых не думал о смерти и прошедшей жизни, а просто жил дальше и жио той жизнью, день за днем, которой получалось жить на склоне лет, ни жалея о чем-то уходящем и не возвартном и не печалясь о приближающейся и неизбежной смерти... Возможно, в таком настрое виноват был солнечный город, в котором поселила своих героев Туве Янссон.
July 2, 2022
Tove Jansson alltså. Hon är för underbar. Älskade hennes noveller för de märkliga och egensinniga karaktärer hon skrev fram i dem. Här är samma lustiga karaktärer, fast i form av pensionärer på ett slags vilohem för äldre, placerat i St Petersburg i Florida. Glöm vad det står i ljudboksbeskrivningen om scifi, har inget med det att göra, det närmaste kommer den vilsna Joe, en slags Jesushippie som inte tror sig behöva bygga sig någon framtid eftersom Jesus snart ska komma. Han är pojkvän till Linda som jobbar på boendet.
Stillsamt roligt, underfundigt och lite spetsigt. Påminner en aning om The hearing trumpet, Leonora Carrington, men kanske mest för att det får vara äldre i fokus och att det är satir.
Stillsamt roligt, underfundigt och lite spetsigt. Påminner en aning om The hearing trumpet, Leonora Carrington, men kanske mest för att det får vara äldre i fokus och att det är satir.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews