The Summer Book - Tove Jansson

9/10

A seemingly straightforward story about life on a Finnish Island, inspired by the actual island of Klovharun where Jansson lived for nearly 30 years. The book is an easy read, each chapter being a separate episode all interlinked around the glories and tribulations of summer. It is a sweet and beautiful meditation on the cyclical and the endless flows of time and tide, cleverly constructed around the intermingling of child and adult perpsectives. The simple writing style and the themes of isolation and interaction with others brought back memories of Moominland Midwinter which I read as a child. This is a delicate hymn to life, the human memory full of the humour, sorrows and joys of life itself. Unsurpising that it has come to regarded as a Scandinanavian classic.