I’m back and continuing to read the world in 2023! This week I read The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Jansson was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1914. She is most known for her creation of the Moomin characters, hippopotamus-esque creatures, and their adventures. She was raised in the Swedish-speaking Finnish minority by two artist parents and published her first illustration at the age of fifteen. Finland is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is Europe’s 8th largest country, the EU’s most sparsely populated one, and is bordered by Sweden, Russia, and Norway.
Jansson was famous for wandering stories of mystical imagination. She wrote The Summer Book shortly after the death of her mother, and the novel takes place on an island inspired by the one on the Gulf of Finland that the Jansson family spent their summers on.
The story centers on a young girl named Sophia and her relationship with her Grandmother. It is split into very short stories that describe their daily lives. Often nothing happens per se, but that nothingness depicts the feeling of living on an island and the seemingly endless Summer days.
One thing that I found captivating about this novel is the fact that it centers on two states of life where you simultaneously have the most and least freedom: childhood and old age. In these states you are free from inhibitions, self-consciousness and social niceties.
At the same time we see that Grandmother is losing freedom through the aging of her body and mind, while Sophia is slowly beginning to age into a state where she is becoming aware of how she fits into the world for the first time and what that means.
Sophia has also just suffered the death of her mother, similar to the experiences of Jansson, and is facing reality for the first time as well.
Each chapter is its own little story, detailing the adventures of Sophia and Grandmother. Though these adventures can range from searching for wildflowers to surviving the sometimes sinister natural elements of the island, no matter how mundane or terrifying the act is Jansson approaches each story with a sense of wonder and trust. While Sophia and Grandmother bicker constantly there is the knowledge that they will come out of the other side of any challenge.
Some of the stories contain morals and lessons reminiscent of a child’s story and some laugh in the face of societal rules. In one adventure, Grandmother and Sophia trespass onto a new neighbor’s property because they have a “private property: no trespassing” sign. Grandmother states, “‘no well-bred person goes ashore on someone else’s island when there’s no one home. But if they put up a sign, then you do it anyway, because it’s a slap in the face’”.
Both Sophia and her Grandmother can be short tempered, one moment Sophia will follow her Grandmother to the ends of the Earth, but some days they ignore each other at all costs. They have the relationship of roommates, neighbors, but above all else, of family.
In one scene, Sophia is crying because she believes she is the cause of a giant storm. Sophia, her Father, and Grandmother had sailed to a nearby island so that her Father could fish. This was of no interest to Sophia so she prayed to God, saying “Dear God, let something happen…if you love me. I’m bored to death. Amen”.
When the storm begins and the three are stranded Sophia is convinced that it is her fault. She is inconsolable, convinced she is responsible for the damages and anyone who is injured in the violent weather.
That is until Grandmother convinces Sophia it was actually her fault, as she prayed for a storm before they left that morning, and we all know God answers prayers in the order He receives them. A switch in Sophia’s mood is switched as she promises to never tell anyone about all of the trouble that Grandmother caused.
As she gets older, Grandmother begins to lose her memory. When Sophia asks her about her time as a Girl Scout (the first ever Girl Scout in Finland, as a matter of fact), she has trouble recalling the moments. She says, “I can’t describe things any more. I can’t find the words, or maybe it’s just that I’m not trying hard enough. It was such a long time ago. No one here was even born. And unless I tell it because I want to, it’s as if it never happened; it gets closed off and then it’s lost”.
No matter the challenge or the struggle, whether it is memory loss, moodiness, or a storm, Sophia and Grandmother weather it all together. I found this story charming, especially with Jansson’s added illustrations. She characterizes the island and its inhabitants in a dreamy, sweet way that is also realistic and describes the grief that the author herself was feeling. The story ends with the change of the seasons, summer into fall, an inevitable change that we are all subject to, no matter how much we wish we could stay in the warm, bright sun.
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