The Summer Book

The Summer Book is one of the representative novels of the Finnish author Tove Jansson—winner of the 1966 Hans Christian Andersen Award and mother of the Moomin series—translated into Chinese by Shen Yunlu. The story takes place on an island in the Gulf of Finland: a calm, wise grandmother and her clever, restless granddaughter Sophia spend the summer living together. They swim in the sea at dawn, walk in the moonlight, row to neighboring islands, enter the woods they call the "ghost forest," camp in a tent on Midsummer, and welcome visitors and neighbors to the island. The island has forests, marshes, bays, and headlands, as well as sudden sea storms and the stillness of August summer nights. Grandmother and granddaughter explore and play together, quarrel and make up over everyday trifles, and through their daily companionship come slowly to understand each other's worries and longings. The book consists of twenty-two short chapters that can each stand alone; there is no traditional linear plot, but rather, like a summer diary, one passage after another strings together the whole season. Summer will end, and people will leave the island, but those subtle experiences of nature, time, solitude, death, and love remain in memory. Jansson herself once said that The Summer Book was the favorite of all her works.