The Summer Book in Around the World

May 31, 2011 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novella, read2011, cold-weather-islands, location-finland

Sweet and sad.

15 likes · Like · see review

Jul 22, 2011 Marieke rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, europe, 2011, saturday-shortstack, nyrb

I am a sucker for crabby but kind old people and I'm equally a sucker for imaginative children who have no idea they are funny. Here i had one of each. The relationship between Sophia and her grandmother was some kind of wonderful...two mischievous souls together on an island keeping themselves busy and sometimes becoming cross with one another. This was my first Tove Jansson book and I dare say I'm hooked. ...more

13 likes · Like · see review

Sep 16, 2013 Claire rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, translated

Vignettes of life on a very small island off the coast of Finland for the child Sophia and her Grandmother, after the premature death of Sophia's mother. The two face their own struggles and within the confines of the island, navigate the summer months with joy, angst, adventure, frustration, tears and laughter.

An excellent depiction of the value of a child to his or her grandparent and the steadfast surety of a grandparent to a child when coming to terms with the less glamorous realities of lif ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Oct 20, 2011 mussolet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: region-europe, read-notmine-nf

"The Summer Book" by Tove Jansson, telling about a grandchilds' and a grandmothers' summer vacations on their island, is praised as one of Scandinavia's modern classics, and it is easy to see why.
The novel brings a typical quiet Scandinavian summer to life; just the type of "still-holiday-but-also-something-else-entirely" that I remember having with my family when I was younger.

The chapters are quite short (ten pages at most I think), and one doesn't need to read them all in one go, which makes ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Oct 17, 2015 Dioni rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: recent-favorites, 1001-books

First published at: http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2016/04/...

I knew about Tove Jansson only in the recent years, after I moved to Europe, from her beloved series Moomin. I didn't grow up with Moomin, but fell in love immediately with the white hippo looking characters. Today I have a Moomin soft toy, Moomin shirt, and Moomin postcards stuck on my bookshelf :) - all without having read or watched the series.

The Summer Book is a standalone non-Moomin grownup book, and it seems very critically accla ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 17, 2011 Rosana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

I finished this book yesterday, but I cannot let go of it. I loved the portrait of childhood against that of aging – the child and the grandmother seem to have met in that curve of life, even if one was climbing it and the other was descending it. It left me too with a sense of nostalgia for my own grandmothers, which were never as quirk as the one in the book, but that at moments allowed themselves to break the rules, to eat dessert before the meal so to speak.

Without planning, I have read a f ...more

7 likes · Like · see review