The Summer Book

Like the clear, brilliantly blue sky that hangs over the small island on which it's set,The Summer Bookis intense, fleeting, and perfect. Tove Jansson's slender novel is a season told in episodes in the lives a six-year-old girl, awakening to existence, and her grandmother, who is nearing the end of hers. The two traipse over coastline and forest in easy companionship, discussing the things that matter to young and old alike: life, death, the nature of God and of love. Though unsentimental and wise, and at times cranky, the grandmother is a willing partner in her granddaughter's childish games; together they build boats from bark, create a miniature Venice, and write a book of imaginary entomology. And though impetuous and volatile, the girl tends to her grandmother with the care of an anxious parent. On an island, thinks the grandmother, "everything is complete." InThe Summer Book, Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the joys and sorrows of our time on earth. Jansson lived for much of her life on an unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland, andThe Summer Bookis her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.

Tove Jansson (1914—2001) was a Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator, and comic-strip author. She is best known as the creator of the Moomin children’s stories, which have been published in thirty-five languages and adapted for theater, opera, film, radio, and television. She received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966, the Prize of the Swedish Academy in 1972, and the Pro Finlandia medal in 1976. The Summer Book is one of ten novels she wrote for adults.

Kathryn Davis has received the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the author of many novels, including Labrador, The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf, Hell, The Walking Tour, The Thin Place, and Versailles. In 2006 she received the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis and lives in Vermont.

Thomas Teal is the translator many books, including Sun City by Tove Jansson and Peasants and Masters by Theodor Kallifatides.