The Summer Book
By Tove Jansson
An elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter Sophia spend the summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. They wander the island, having philosophical conversations of all kinds, talking about death, or how best to dive into the water. They fight. They curse. They have adventures, building things and breaking into the new summer house on a neighbouring island, outraged that the businessman who built it doesn’t leave the door open.
Written with clarity, brusque humour and wisdom, The Summer Book is a fresh, vivid and magical novel about seemingly endless summers of discovery.
Publishing information
Rights sold
- Arabic
- Armenian
- Azerbaijani
- Bulgarian
- Catalan
- Chinese simplified
- Danish
- Dutch
- English (WW excl. Canada, US and the Philippines)
- Estonian
- Finnish
- French
- Galician
- Georgian
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Latvian
- Macedonian
- Norwegian
- Persian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Serbian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
Reviews
“It may sound on the nose, but Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book is a work of such restrained power – a perfect lucky stone of a novel – that for me it bears rereading every year”
“A beautiful book about the relationship between a grandmother and her granddaughter, holidaying on the family island in the Finnish archipelago. Like the Moomins books by the same author, the writing is whimsical and poignant.”
“(...)The Summer Book, which features one of my all-time, absolute favourite Grandmas ever. I know it's not a children's book, but Jansson is one of our most beloved children's authors so... I love this book; I love the gentle pace of the story about a summer spent on a family island in the gulf of Finland, focusing on the beautiful, tempestuous, playful relationship between the very new (Sophie) and the very old (Grandmother), told with the brutal honesty that befits both ages. Please read this book.”
“Jansson captured the pace of summer life on a small remote island in the Gulf of Finland. Skillfully crafted words lull the reader into a quiet space of mind and place. Her keen observations (on both nature and humankind) are a gentle, compassionate soft punch to the stomach at times. Written with a naturalist eye and an obvious love of life on the Finnish coast, “The Summer Book” gives us a good reason to stop and take a few moments to enjoy the waning days of this season.”
“The Summer Book is a short book, a sweet little gem...”
“Nothing seems to happen in The Summer Book—the unspeakable, awful event has just occurred—so small things take on great importance, the way they can when you are either very young or very old, for this is a dual coming-of-age story.”
“The Summer Book’s limpid style belies a deep psychological subtlety. It’s about how people can live close together for months with tact and grace, and about how rich and rewarding even a small world can be.”
“It is beautifully done. What might, in less skilful hands, have been mawkish or twee, maintains to the last sentence a precise and rigorous habit of observation, an acute sense of the play of emotion between people and the landscape they inhabit, and a remarkable ability to render accurately the emotions of the very old and the very young.”
“Few books since Robinson Crusoe have evoked the joys of island living so powerfully as this slim Finnish novel(...)the story clings on to the imagination like the trusting hand of a child, or the clutch of an elderly woman.”
“Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer – its sunlight and storms – into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of her’s, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland(...)Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the varied joys and sorrows of life.”
“Jansson’s brilliance is to create a narrative that seems, at least, to have no forward motion, to exist in lit moments, gleaming dark moments, like lights on a string, each chapter its own beautifully constructed, random-seeming, complete story. Her writing is all magical deception, her sentences simple and loaded; the novel reads like looking through clear water and seeing, suddenly, the depth ... Jansson was a writer who knew the proper magnitudes of our small worlds.”
“Every so often, a book is published that captures something in us … The Summer Book is one of those.”
“A marvellously uplifting read, full of gentle humour and wisdom. It deserves to be read not only for the rare beauty of its writing but for the understanding that life, like summer, is precious.”
“A masterpiece’: why Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book is as relevant as ever at 50.”
“When Sophia steps on moss now, she still thinks of The Summer Book’s warning, telling herself “OK, you can step on it once, maybe even twice, but the third time is really bad”. This attitude of care and preservation is at the heart of The Summer Book: it proposes that every plant, every insect – and, indeed, every person – has a right to exist and to be looked after. And, 50 years on, that message is more vital than ever.”
“A masterpiece of microcosm, a perfection of the small, quiet read.”
“Absent of sentimentality, full of love and humor and wisdom, this is a tale about how much fun two people can have in the middle of nowhere, when they are practicing social isolation in earnest.”
“There couldn’t be a more perfect summer than on the island in the Gulf of Finland where little Sofia lives and works with her laconic father, and her more lively and slightly eccentric grandmother. This is a great little book that you should definitely read at least once every summer.”
“One of the finest depictions we know of heartfelt friendship that goes across generational boundaries.”
“Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life.”
