The Summer Book

Like the clear, brilliantly blue sky that hangs over the small island on which it's set, "The Summer Book" is intense, fleeting, and perfect. Tove Jansson's slender novel is a season told in episodes in the lives a six-year-old girl, awakening to existence, and her grandmother, who is nearing the en [...]
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Like the clear, brilliantly blue sky that hangs over the small island on which it's set, "The Summer Book" is intense, fleeting, and perfect. Tove Jansson's slender novel is a season told in episodes in the lives a six-year-old girl, awakening to existence, and her grandmother, who is nearing the end of hers. The two traipse over coastline and forest in easy companionship, discussing the things that matter to young and old alike: life, death, the nature of God and of love. Though unsentimental and wise, and at times cranky, the grandmother is a willing partner in her granddaughter's childish games; together they build boats from bark, create a miniature Venice, and write a book of imaginary entomology. And though impetuous and volatile, the girl tends to her grandmother with the care of an anxious parent. On an island, thinks the grandmother, "everything is complete." In "The Summer Book," Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the joys and sorrows of our time on earth.



Jansson lived for much of her life on an unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland, and "The Summer Book "is her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.





Review Quotes:

"Tove Jansson was a genius. This is a marvelous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny." -Philip Pullman

"A wise, joyous book...it unfolds the knowledge and the beauty of the two lives it embraces-old wisdom and young discover, intertwining like vines." -Rex Reed



"The Summer Book manages to make you feel good as well as wise, without having to make too much effort...[it] says so much that we want to hear in such an accessible form, without ever really saying anything at all." -"The Independent" (London)



"Few books since "Robinson Crusoe" have evoked the joys of island living so powerfully as this Finnish novella." -"The Observer," PAPERBACK OF THE WEEK



"The Summer Book is a marvellously uplifting read, full of gentle humour and wisdom." -"Daily Telegraph "(London)



"A marvellous book...The prose is sublime: plain, but not oppressively so." -"Independent" on Sunday (London)



"A...beautiful novel which blends humour and poetry with detailed observation of tiny things." -"Daily Mail" (London)



"It's hard to describe the astonishing achievement of Jansson's artistry...a perfection of the small, quiet read." -"The Guardian," (London) BOOK OF THE WEEK



"A wonderful novel to devour in the sunshine...full of charm and character." -"The Independent," 50 BEST BOOKS FOR SUMMER



"Every so often, a book is published that captures something in us...The Summer Book is one of those." -"Daily Telegraph"



"Responses, conversations, and observations yield quietly reflective and funny ruminations on life and death." -"The Age" (Australia)



"Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation inlanguage, and someone who knows exactly how to convey her gift for sensing the meaning embedded in the most mundane act or turn of phrase." -Ali Smith



"This is a wonderful, life-affirming, spirited book. Reading it was a tonic." -Chris Stewart (author, "Driving Over Lemons")



"Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life." -Esther Freud



"The Summer Book is beautiful and warm, with the kind of wisdom we can adapt to our everyday lives." -Liv Ullmann



"Take a book in which there is no plot but bucketloads of positive feelings presented simply, and it will become a cult. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance "and "Jonathan Livingston Seagull "were both bestsellers; no one could say what either was really about, but everyone could quote a meaningful truism from them. The Summer Book is in this mould: it manages to make you feel good as well as wise..." -"Independent"