The Summer Book
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Review
"'The Summer Book is a marvellously uplifting read, full of gentle humour and wisdom.' Justine Picardie, Daily Telegraph 'A marvellous book.... The prose is sublime.' Murrough O'Brien, Independent on Sunday 'It's hard to describe the astonishing achievement of Jansson's artistry... a perfection of the small, quiet read.' The Guardian, BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Jansson was a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry, and this is a book to treasure.' Philip Pullman 'Every so often, a book is published that captures something in us.... The Summer Book is one of those.' Rachel Simhon, The Daily Telegraph"
Daily Telegraph, 24 May 2003 Justine Picardie (extract)
"The Summer Book is a marvellously uplifting read, full of gentle humour and wisdom.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
87 of 89 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Beautifully-written, 'The Summer Book' focuses upon the relationship between a little girl, Sophia and her wilful, yet wise grandmother as they spend the summer together on a remote Finnish island.
Based on Jansson's own family experiences and love of nature, the stories are deceptively simplistic. The author manages to cram a huge amount of ideas, observations and description into a relatively short space without being sentimental or over-descriptive. The characters are excellent. The grandmother and Sophia are feisty individuals who enjoy questioning the world and their conversations can be at times, both hilarious and touching.
This edition has also been produced with real care. Esther Freud's foreword is probably one of the most fascinating that I have read in a long time(she visits the island and meets the 'grown-up' Sophia) and the inclusion of photographs of the island and Jansson's family only adds to the slightly sad beauty of the novel.
For me, it sums up what great literature should be. It's an easy and enjoyable book to read, but you leave with the impression of having touched on some huge ideas. I'm looking forward to reading it many times over in the future.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I came to this book with misgivings. It was a choice for our book club, and I approached it thinking it would be another load or portentous cliches a la Paolo Cuelo, or as twee as AA Milne's poems (Dorothy Parker verdict: Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up).
How wrong I was. This is an instant classic, a book you will return to over and over, and anyone who can't see that is not reading with their brain. it's a deceptively simple series of incidents on a tiny island over a summer between Grandmother and Granddaughter Sophia. There is a father, a strong presence who never says anything except when it is time to leave. Some strangers intrude from time to time, loud and weird, but the two close ranks against them. Mostly they potter around, while the grandmother gives the best example of parenting I know in literature.
There are many strengths to the book. Firstly, it has that kind of fascination with minutiae which can have you looking into a rock pool for hours. Remember as a kid how on long summer holidays you could lose yourself for days just mooching or making something stupid? (I remember I spent two months tunnelling to Australia when I was eight.) "The Summer Book" really captures that.
It also captures an essential Finno-Swedish quality. Scandinavia is full of grannies like this one - feisty, practical old women full of love but also self-contained. And all Swedes have a wooden hut somewhere miles from anywhere they disappear to for the summer. Read this book and you'll never need to visit the Gulf of Finland.
This is allied to a real feeling for countryside and ecology, written in 1972 way before ecology was fashionable. The descriptions are those of someone who has got down and dirty in the earth, not someone who's seen pretty pictures from their drawing-room window.
And though this is an evocation of childhood tinged with regret and nostalgia, it is not remotely sentimental. In fact it is quite hard. It can encompass storms, shipwrecks and scavenging; a laboriously-built toy village gets washed away in minutes. Childhood terrors are terrifying, and there is a real presence of death. Indeed the whole book ends in death.
The relationship between the generations is subtle, understated and also very funny. We see it from both points of view, changing from paragraph to paragraph. It is never patronising, and the reader isn't patronised either. Tove Janssen seems to be saying, "There may be a moral here for you, but you'll have to work it out for yourself, and anyway you can take it or leave it."
If like me you regard the closing chapter of "The House at Pooh Corner" as one of the high points of literature about childhood, don't hesitate - buy this book.
How wrong I was. This is an instant classic, a book you will return to over and over, and anyone who can't see that is not reading with their brain. it's a deceptively simple series of incidents on a tiny island over a summer between Grandmother and Granddaughter Sophia. There is a father, a strong presence who never says anything except when it is time to leave. Some strangers intrude from time to time, loud and weird, but the two close ranks against them. Mostly they potter around, while the grandmother gives the best example of parenting I know in literature.
There are many strengths to the book. Firstly, it has that kind of fascination with minutiae which can have you looking into a rock pool for hours. Remember as a kid how on long summer holidays you could lose yourself for days just mooching or making something stupid? (I remember I spent two months tunnelling to Australia when I was eight.) "The Summer Book" really captures that.
It also captures an essential Finno-Swedish quality. Scandinavia is full of grannies like this one - feisty, practical old women full of love but also self-contained. And all Swedes have a wooden hut somewhere miles from anywhere they disappear to for the summer. Read this book and you'll never need to visit the Gulf of Finland.
This is allied to a real feeling for countryside and ecology, written in 1972 way before ecology was fashionable. The descriptions are those of someone who has got down and dirty in the earth, not someone who's seen pretty pictures from their drawing-room window.
And though this is an evocation of childhood tinged with regret and nostalgia, it is not remotely sentimental. In fact it is quite hard. It can encompass storms, shipwrecks and scavenging; a laboriously-built toy village gets washed away in minutes. Childhood terrors are terrifying, and there is a real presence of death. Indeed the whole book ends in death.
The relationship between the generations is subtle, understated and also very funny. We see it from both points of view, changing from paragraph to paragraph. It is never patronising, and the reader isn't patronised either. Tove Janssen seems to be saying, "There may be a moral here for you, but you'll have to work it out for yourself, and anyway you can take it or leave it."
If like me you regard the closing chapter of "The House at Pooh Corner" as one of the high points of literature about childhood, don't hesitate - buy this book.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
“The Summer Book” is episodic, detailing events from long summers spent on a remote Island off the coast of Finland, and concentrating on the rapport between the recently motherless six-year old Sophia and her Grandmother. Although short, the book covers a lot of ground – a clear and lucid observation of the natural history of the Island and the surrounding sea, reflections on aging and the end of life and, above all, a sharply drawn portrait of the relationship between young and old.
I didn’t feel the book was particularly well served either by the introduction or by the presentation but that shouldn’t put anyone off.
This excellent book tells its tale shorn of sentimentality and platitude. The prose style (I suppose that’s also a nod in the direction of the translation) is simple and elegant. It left me wanting to tone down my enthusiasm in case I put my friends and relatives off reading it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
beautiful
what a lovely lovely book.
I gobbled it up on a journey from Exeter to London and spent a lot of my time with tears of laughter streaming down my face.
I gobbled it up on a journey from Exeter to London and spent a lot of my time with tears of laughter streaming down my face.
Published 14 days ago by Sarah
A modern Scandinavian classic
'The Summer Book' was first published in 1972, when Tove Jansson was 58 and already well known as the author of the 'Moomin' books. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Paul Bowes
Tove captures the beauty of childhood
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... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Rachel
Exquisite - a book to cherish forever
This is a beautiful collection of almost stand-alone chapters which detail the life of a child and her grandmother on a rather remote island off the Finnish coast. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Helen Hoffmann
One of my favourite books
I simply love this book. It is so evocative of a time I wish I'd had, reading it feels like a breeze blowing across your face with your eyes shut. Read more
Published 14 months ago by phloxy
Love Beyond Age
It is a beautiful book!
Jansson is a painter,and wrote with painter's view,everything she describe is just like a picture. Read more
Jansson is a painter,and wrote with painter's view,everything she describe is just like a picture. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Susanna Huang
A Return to Innocence
This is such a beautiful book - written from the eyes and heart of a small girl and her grandmother, all the action is set on a tiny island off the cost of Finland. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Stewart T. Boyle
One to keep
I bought this for my husband who had read a borrowed copy on holiday. He enjoyed it so much that he wanted one for the book shelf. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Dancing chef
Tove Jansson. The Summer Book
A classic in its genre, Tove Jansson writes about small happenings on an island in the Finnish Gulf between an older lady and her granddaughter. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Tuukka Luukas
At last a happy book
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson written in 1972. Notes from my Book Club.
A beautiful book to hold - it was a calming escape of a read yet with so much that we can all... Read more
A beautiful book to hold - it was a calming escape of a read yet with so much that we can all... Read more
Published on 2 May 2010 by Mrs. Katharine Kirby
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