The Slummer: Quarters Till Death

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The novelist Philip Pullman described the book as "a marvelous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny." [4] 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.’ Ali Smith, The Guardian Jansson manages to have her cake and eat it too. She allows us to enjoy Grandmother, in all her magisterial forthrightness; but she herself as a writer is anything but blunt. She is subtle, and the book's themes accumulate gradually while you're concentrating on something else. Every so often, a book is published that captures something in us … The Summer Book is one of those.” Rachel Simhon, The Daily Telegraph Nothing," her grandmother answered. "That is to say," she added angrily, "I'm looking for my false teeth."

THE SUMMER BOOK – Reading Group Choices THE SUMMER BOOK – Reading Group Choices

I feel I have been overusing the word wonderful lately but The Summer Book is just such a reading experience. A grandmother and child and nature, all three somewhat wild and uncontrollable, live along with their son/father, during the summer, on a barren island they all love. This was written 40 years ago but is really timeless in its story of a child's unrelenting thirst for knowledge and stubborn daily brawls with the world at large. Most of her time is spent alternately loving, hating and hiking with her grandmother who is passing through her own difficult phase of life as she feels her body slowing down. Tove Jansson was born and died in Helsinki, Finland. As a Finnish citizen whose mother tongue was Swedish, she was part of the Swedish-speaking Finns minority. Thus, all her books were originally written in Swedish. Rayner, Richard (27 April 2008). "Dreams of an endless summer". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 28 May 2010 . Retrieved 6 September 2012. The Summer Book’ is often talked about this way. Tove Jansson wrote it in 1972, a year after the death of her mother, the artist Signe Hammersten. Their bond had been close and Jansson’s grief was intense; it is the dark generative heart of a book that describes the relations between a very old woman and her six-year-old granddaughter, Sophia, and the life that goes on around them on a very small island over the course of a single summer”. Poetic understatement, dry humor and a deep love for nature are obvious throughout her oeuvre. . . . The book is as lovely, as evocative as a film by Hayao Miyazaki.It’s clear to me that this novel between a grandmother and a granddaughter….was very personal to Tove Jansson. This slim, magical, life-affirming novel tells the story of a young girl and her grandmother, who spend their summer together on a small, isolated island in the Gulf of Finland. 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.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, The New York Times Eriksson was small and strong and the colour of the landscape, except that his eyes were blue. When people talked about him or thought about him, it seemed natural to lift their heads and gaze out over the sea […. A]s long as he stayed, he had everyone's undivided attention. No one did anything, no one looked at anything but Eriksson. They would hang on his every word, and when he was gone and nothing had actually been said, their thoughts would dwell gravely on what he had left unspoken.

The Summer Book — Sort of Books | An Tove Jansson | The Summer Book — Sort of Books | An

Bloody nitwit, Grandmother muttered to herself. Out loud she said, ‘You better ask your father about generations and all that. Ask him to draw it on a piece of paper. If you’re interested’”. The profoundly humane story of the unique friendship between the little girl Sophia and her grandmother, who spend endless summer days on an island far out in the archipelago, is loved by readers around the world. As the two learn to adjust to each other’s fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges – one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself. Translated from Swedish and written in 1974 these 22 short vignettes occur on a small island off the Gulf of Finland. Sophia, a precocious six year old, and her wise and spunky grandmother explore this island during one summer at their cottage. Whether seeking out the flora and fauna, weathering a violent storm, dealing with a difficult child or snooping around the vacant home of a newcomer, they delight in the present. Sophia, like many young children, has many difficult questions: life, death, love, God. She has recently lost her mother and her grandmother must answer her inquiries; she does so with wisdom and love. Every child should have a grandparent like Sophia's. Although she has age related physical limitations, she is always ready for an adventure: crawling on her hands and knees, carving woodland creatures, inventing stories and swimming in the frigid northern waters. They have their snits and their moods, but the loving relationship is never doubted. Do you remember when you were a child, so many books were enchanting, casting a spell of wonder and reverence over you that you carried around long after the book was finished? Even if the book contained absolutely no magic or fantasy, but was "down to earth," about the lives of real people and "ordinary" experiences -- told in an extraordinary way? Then you "graduated" to "adult" books and began to wonder why really wonderful books and authors for adults were so rare and difficult to discover ... I)t manages to make you feel good as well as wise, without having to make too much effort. (...) This book is in danger of taking itself rather too seriously; there is a lot of home-spun philosophy but only rare flashes of humour, which nevertheless are very funny. But what makes The Summer Book rise above the realm of happy thoughts for grim times are the observations on being young and growing old: the girl's desperation not to appear frightened of deep water, her grandmother's determination not to let her see that she knew she was." - Dea Birkett, The Independent

The Summer Book collects twenty-two summer scenes and episodes, centred around a young girl, Sophia, and her old grandmother, and the time they spend together on a northern island in the Gulf of Finland. Jansson evokes the chilly nights of August, the virulence of summer storms and the silent walks on the untamed beaches of a lost island in Finland with tenderness and mischievous humor; calling out to the hidden child that lays dormant in adults and the grown-up that peeks from behind the guileless eyes of children. Grandmother takes cigarette breaks to keep her chatty granddaughter, Sophia, at bay, and she favors crawling, on all fours, when her dizziness is bad. Maybe because grandmothers are the only people in the world capable of educating using the art of playing and granddaughters are the only ones ready to play with grandmothers seriously. Tove Jansson, the world-renowned creator of the Moomintroll characters, succinctly harnesses the power and glory of a seaside summer season in the twenty-two elegant vignettes contained within The Summer Book. Here is a book in no need of magic or any other fantastical adornments as she reminds us that we can discover pure, beautiful magic in the natural world all around us if only we quiet our lives and open our eyes to it. Set upon a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland much like where Jansson’s own family spent their summers, Summer Book chronicles the interactions and adventures between a young girl, Sophia, and her grandmother as they embrace the world and all the facts of life that surround them. Tender and subtle, yet laced with poignant investigations of life, love and death, Jansson’s words caress the soul like a warm breeze carrying with it the effluvium of the sea and all its majesty.