The Summer Book by Töve Jansson is on its way to our shelves. This is a new-to-us old novel: a Scandinavian classic about a grandmother and her six-year-old granddaughter summering on a tiny island in the Finnish Archipelago, a cluster of more than 40,000 islands in the Baltic Sea. In short, flawlessly distilled chapters that feel complete in themselves—a bit like independent stories—events take place: the beach is combed, flora is observed, and, on a particularly marshy patch of shoreline, the city of Venice is constructed; worms are cut in half with a spade and a book is written about them; cats are traded with neighbors, bulbs are planted, and in a soggy overnight sea vigil Midsummer is celebrated. Both grandmother and granddaughter spend time crawling through tunnels they have excavated beneath the native vegetation; as well as napping directly on the ground.
Born in 1914 in Helsinki to Swedish-speaking parents, Töve Jansson grew up on islands like the one she describes here, summering in rented fishing cabins throughout the archipelago. As an adult, she and her partner Tuulikki Pietilä built a one-room cabin on one of the smallest and farthest-out islands. The two women positioned windows on each of the cabin’s four walls, in order to be forewarned about traffic approaching from any direction; and lived without plumbing or electricity through all but the coldest months of the year until 1991, when their boat and only means of transportation on and off the island was destroyed by a storm.
Jansson is probably best known as a comic-strip illustrator and author of the popular Moomins series for children. She did not begin writing for adults until 1968, when she turned 54. The Summer Book appeared four years later, in 1972: just one year after Jansson lost her mother.
Though only mentioned once, loss of a mother lies at the heart of The Summer Book and gives it power. Intergenerational communication is strangely direct in The Summer Book, since the person who used to stand between grandmother and granddaughter, attenuating their relationship, is not between them anymore.
This is a magical novel: shimmery, light-filled, funny and at the same time profound. We are lucky to be acquiring two copies this summer for our collection.