6/3/2023 0 Comments The summer book janssonIt can be read as a love story to Jansson’s mother. This is a book of love, essentially: a book in which Jansson manages to sculpt the Grandmother’s character as benevolent, wise, humble, playful. There is a sprinkling of other characters in the book, but these people are passers-by in the soft flow of the writing. Jansson’s island is based on a true place, as are the two main characters of Sophia (who starts off in the book as a six year old) and Sophia’s Grandmother (based on Jansson’s own mother, Signe Hammarsten). It is, instead, a string of beautiful arrangements told in the time of a small island in the Gulf of Finland. It would be accurate to say that this book is not, and will not be, for everyone: there is no definite plot, no narrative sweep of direction, no main crucible or conflict for the characters to navigate. Tove Jansson’s Summer Book is as delicate and as beautiful as an object found on a beach. If we’re also writers as well as readers, we think ‘this is the book I wish I’d written’. We think that we can’t let the pages run out. Every so often in our adventures in reading we come across a book that is an object of astounding beauty.
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