The Summer Book
Tove Jansson
Belletristik/Erzählende Literatur
Beschreibung
Tove Jansson's classic, bestselling novel
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Glenn Close
'Distils the essence of summer' Robert Macfarlane
'Magical, life-affirming' Elizabeth Gilbert
The Worldwide Classic about a tiny island and larger love.
An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. 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.
Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour, and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. With a foreword by Esther Freud and an afterword by Sophia Jansson (on whom the child 'Sophia' is based) who returns to the island during the pandemic at the point of becoming a grandmother herself.
Includes a 15pp epilogue by Tove's niece Sophia Jansson - the inspiration for 'Sophia' - on a personal and moving return to the island.
'Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life.' Esther Freud
'Tove Jansson was a genius. This is a marvellous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny.' Philip Pullman
Rezensionen
It's hard to describe the astonishing achievement of Jansson'
Tove Jansson was a genius. This is a marvellous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny.
This slim, wise masterpiece... is both unsentimental and heart-melting, and I read it every year.
Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life.
Few books since Robinson Crusoe have evoked the joys of island living so powerfully as this Finnish novella.
This is a wonderful, life-affirming, spirited book. Reading it was a tonic.
<p>Every so often, a book is published that captures something in us. . . . <i>The Summer Book</i> is one of those.</p>
<i>The Summer Book</i>'
<p><i>The Summer Book</i> is a marvellously uplifting read, full of gentle humour and wisdom.</p>
<p>A marvellous book.... The prose is sublime: plain, but not oppressively so.</p>
An odd but beautiful novel which blends humour and poetry with detailed observation of tiny things.
A wonderful novel to devour in the sunshine . . . full of charm and character.
It is like looking through clear water and seeing, suddenly, the depth ... Jansson was a writer who knew the proper magnitudes of our small worlds.
Kundenbewertungen
sophia, finland, island living, Moomins, grandmother