The Summer Book
Tove Jansson is best known for creating the Moomins, but The Summer Book is her small masterpiece for adults. It follows Sophia, a six year old girl, and her grandmother across a series of days on an island in the Gulf of Finland where the family spends every summer. Sophia's mother has recently died, and the loss sits quietly in the background as the two argue, explore, build a miniature Venice out of found materials, and consider heaven and hell. Each chapter is a short episode with no continuous plot, and together they map a relationship between a wise, slightly gruff old woman and a curious, insistent child. Jansson based the book on her own mother and niece. Elizabeth Gilbert has praised it as one of the most quietly perfect books she knows.
What you might want to know about The Summer Book
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A grandmother and her young granddaughter share a summer on a small Finnish island in the years after the child's mother has died.
Gilbert has named The Summer Book as one of the books she rereads and gives as gifts, and she has praised Tove Jansson as a writer of quiet emotional precision. She points to the grandmother granddaughter relationship as one of the finest in modern fiction.
No. The Summer Book is for adults and stands entirely separate from Jansson's Moomin stories, though fans of the Moomins often recognize the same tender attention here.
The Summer Book was written by Tove Jansson, published in 1972 by NYRB Classics.
The Summer Book is 184 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Summer Book takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
The Summer Book is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
