The Slummer: Quarters Till Death

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The Summer Book is pure loveliness. The movements of tides and winds and boats and insects loom larger for our narrator than the currents of history, and the profound quiet of the setting—I’m reminded of Akhil Sharma’s description of a prose like “white light”—allows us to hear Jansson’s unsparing and ironic tenderness, a tone that remains purely her own, even in translation.” —Garth Risk Hallberg, The Millions Maybe because grandmothers are the only people in the world capable of educating using the art of playing and granddaughters are the only ones ready to play with grandmothers seriously. One tiny island in the gulf of Finland comes to represent a complete world full of miracle and mystery, safety and danger as we are swept happily along through the adventures of a feisty, indomitable little girl and her refreshingly different grandmother. I find this sort of writing – which has no real plot but is all about exploring characters – very hard to do and I am always lost in admiration when I see it done well. Sophia and Grandmother strike me as absolutely real, but even the cameos are brilliantly described – Jansson has a real flair for these thumbnail character sketches, unusual and specific: An island* — *summers* — “are often described as being impossible to categorize or describe, as if to suggest that they defy not only human powers of speech but also, obstinately, comprehension”.

The Slummer, Quarters Till Death by Geoffrey Simpson The Slummer, Quarters Till Death by Geoffrey Simpson

I love wild settings, and I adore wild characters, and Grandmother's as wild as they make 'em. She's a queen, a crone, a woman who has outlived her husband and her son's wife and has “reached the age where a person can safely be truthful” about certain things. (And she says them).I)t manages to make you feel good as well as wise, without having to make too much effort. (...) This book is in danger of taking itself rather too seriously; there is a lot of home-spun philosophy but only rare flashes of humour, which nevertheless are very funny. But what makes The Summer Book rise above the realm of happy thoughts for grim times are the observations on being young and growing old: the girl's desperation not to appear frightened of deep water, her grandmother's determination not to let her see that she knew she was." - Dea Birkett, The Independent I loved it and it's a perfect read for a summer which will, I think, be memorable for many of us as a kind of shadow season, a time carved out from normal life and defined by the absence of normality.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson turns 50 years - Moomin The Summer Book by Tove Jansson turns 50 years - Moomin

Translated from Swedish and written in 1974 these 22 short vignettes occur on a small island off the Gulf of Finland. Sophia, a precocious six year old, and her wise and spunky grandmother explore this island during one summer at their cottage. Whether seeking out the flora and fauna, weathering a violent storm, dealing with a difficult child or snooping around the vacant home of a newcomer, they delight in the present. Sophia, like many young children, has many difficult questions: life, death, love, God. She has recently lost her mother and her grandmother must answer her inquiries; she does so with wisdom and love. Every child should have a grandparent like Sophia's. Although she has age related physical limitations, she is always ready for an adventure: crawling on her hands and knees, carving woodland creatures, inventing stories and swimming in the frigid northern waters. They have their snits and their moods, but the loving relationship is never doubted. This slim, magical, life-affirming novel tells the story of a young girl and her grandmother, who spend their summer together on a small, isolated island in the Gulf of Finland. Absent of sentimentality, full of love and humor and wisdom, this is a tale about how much fun two people can have in the middle of nowhere, when they are practicing social isolation in earnest.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, The New York Times Within the family, Sophia says, “there was just an unexplained but self-evident tolerance for whomever”. As a child, she was never explicitly told about the nature of Tove and Tuulikki’s relationship – homosexuality would still have been classified as an illness in Finland at the time – but she could see that they loved one another, and that the other members of her family accepted them. Tove Jansson, the world-renowned creator of the Moomintroll characters, succinctly harnesses the power and glory of a seaside summer season in the twenty-two elegant vignettes contained within The Summer Book. Here is a book in no need of magic or any other fantastical adornments as she reminds us that we can discover pure, beautiful magic in the natural world all around us if only we quiet our lives and open our eyes to it. Set upon a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland much like where Jansson’s own family spent their summers, Summer Book chronicles the interactions and adventures between a young girl, Sophia, and her grandmother as they embrace the world and all the facts of life that surround them. Tender and subtle, yet laced with poignant investigations of life, love and death, Jansson’s words caress the soul like a warm breeze carrying with it the effluvium of the sea and all its majesty. A very long time ago, Grandmother had wanted to tell about all the things they did, but no one had bothered to ask. And now she had lost the urge”.I never really knew either of my grandmothers as they both lived in Italy. This book made me yearn for a relationship I never had.

Perfect Gift for a Runner - The Slummer - geoffreysimpson

Some of my favourite moments were the conversations between Grandmother and Sophia. They had me smiling and laughing out loud. Tove Jansson | The Summer Book — Sort of Books | An independent publisher of both original and classic fiction and non-fiction Sort of Books | An independent publisher of both original and classic fiction and non-fiction And we know, if the child does not, that the summers of her grandmother are limit; she has already passed into the autumn of her life and winter is nipping at her heels. But what a blessed thing this time is for them both, for Grandmother has a chance to see the wonder that her life has been and Sophia is building memories that will someday stand in for this person she must surely lose. I could read this story forever. I could easily make it an annual tradition to read it every summer. This book consists of 22 vignettes of moments between Grandmother and Sophia and their time on the island. All took place in summer, but not necessarily the same summer. You can tell that the author has a respect for nature and our planet. Grandmother, through her conversations with Sophia, is trying to install her love of their natural surroundings into her. We learn early on that Sophia’s mother has recently died. There is never an outright discussion of this, but at moments, you can sense this in Sophia’s actions. The author has a beautiful, understated style to her writing.Jansson was a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry, and this is a book to treasure.” Philip Pullman There’s a line in The Summer Book by Tove Jansson where the narrator describes the fragility of moss. Residents of the tiny Finnish island where the novel is set are careful to avoid treading on the plant, and it is “only farmers and summer guests” who walk on it.

The Slummer: Quarters Till Death by Geoffrey Simpson

Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer – its sunlight and storms – into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of her’s, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland ... Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the varied joys and sorrows of life.’ Robert MacFarlane Everything was fine, and yet everything was overshadowed by a great sadness. It was August, and the weather was sometimes stormy and sometimes nice, but for Grandmother, no matter what happened, it was only time on top of time, since everything is vanity and a chasing after the wind.” Grandmother takes cigarette breaks to keep her chatty granddaughter, Sophia, at bay, and she favors crawling, on all fours, when her dizziness is bad. Jansson's variety of episodes, ranging from those where little of note seems to happen to the modestly dramatic (including one of the great storms in recent memory, which Sophia thinks she caused -- only to have her grandmother take that burden from her), are at best loosely connected, yet this mosaic approach makes for a very rich picture.a b Knight, Lucy (1 September 2022). " 'A masterpiece': why Tove Jansson's The Summer Book is as relevant as ever at 50". The Guardian.