Group Read, August 2014: The Summer Book

I've heard a lot of good things about this book. Will we all enjoy it?

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The Summer Book by Tove Jansson- Book reviews

www.goodreads.com/book/show/79550.The_Summer_Book

Hoping I'll get a copy of The Summer Book before the month is out from my library. It appears to be a popular read right now.... there are several people ahead of me on the hold list.

I know some people who like to reread it every summer...and since it's 100 years from her birth she is getting a lot of public attention here, exhibitions, books, articles etc. I read it couple of years ago and haven't got around to revisiting it (I did read her later book Fair Game earlier this year though).

Anyway, written when she was transitioning from Moomins to more adult fiction (though the last couple of Moomin books were not really children's books either), and done as a series of vignettes forming a novel: she had done this before with Sculptor's Daughter and would use it again in Fair Game, and several Moomin books are also a bit episodic.

My favourite Jansson is still Moominpappa at Sea but this one is up there too...

More about the book & writer:

www.sortof.co.uk/books/the-summer-book/

www.sortof.co.uk/authors/tove-jansson/

I'm on the waiting list for the ebook. I loved the The True Deceiver, but I'm a bit afraid of this one. I skimmed the Wikipedia page and the reviews, and I see words that are bad signs. "Delightful." "Charming." "Inspirational." "Life changing."

I will see.

I'm 1/3 through and so far this is a nice book. I agree with the words of praise heaped upon it, even the ones Anoplophora finds off-putting -- well, maybe not "life changing"! It's more just... nice. The writing is wonderful, spare yet evocative, and the two main characters are prickly rather than perfect.

Both of the books I'm reading now remind me oddly of different aspects of Walden, a book I disliked, but each of them is better. The Summer Book is a wonderful slow observation of a single habitat, while Notes from the Underground is a somewhat hectoring series of observations on mankind by an eccentric old guy -- but a more entertaining one than Thoreau.

The Summer Book is one of my favorites finds from the 1001 books list. I was also a bit turned off by descriptions of it being "charming" and "delightful" as that is not my thing. This book has an edge of darkness to it, though, that balanced it perfectly for me. I'll be curious to see what others think of it!

I read this book in a day and found it all quite pleasant and contemplative without reaching the heights all the positive reviews led me to hope for. Sophia and her grandmother clearly had a special relationship, but for me it lacked the warmth and depth I was expecting. I agree with annamorphic that there are similarities with Walden with its eye on details in an isolated environment.

I read and finished this today, I agree with Puckers, it was a nice read but I didn't think it was as great as the reviews lead me to believe.
I found the island charming and the two main characters to be strange little things, the grandma child-like in her reactions to Sophia, for instance the chapter with the lityle girl Pipsin and the chapter about the cat.

To start with I enjoyed the epispsodic entries but I have to say by the end I tired of this and skimmed the last few episodes. I can see why some people really love this book, it reminded me of Pippi Longstockings but for adults, bit I'm afraid this won't be a book which sticks with me for long.

I finished The Summer Book this morning. I enjoyed the book -- it felt aptly named as a book that would make a nice beach read, but I didn't think it was so wonderful that I'd read it again and again.

The vignettes had a nice rhythm to them that was reminiscent of the sea.

It's funny how geography has such an impact on how we react to a book. When I picked up the book and saw it was on an island, I immediately thought back to my own summers growing up in France off of Larochelle - but when I started reading, it was all wrong! Instead, I was transported to the Canadian summer cottages which are most often on remote lakes: I felt surrounded by the sound of loons and little critters and was deeply touched by Sophia and her grandmother's relationship. Of course, there are differences in the geography, but there is the same sense of solitude, stillness and comfort, suddenly threatened by a wild storm. It was a familiar and enveloping environment and I was really able to plunge into it.

The introduction talked about there being one big moment in the book as we learn that Sophia's mother is dead. To me, her absence seemed so inconsequential, just as was her father in shadows. These stories are pointed in time and place - the granddaughter and grandmother are in a world all on to itself and bringing - or even talking - about anyone else is an intrusion (all it takes is for Berenice's unwelcome presence to demonstrate it). This is what made this book such a pleasure: it is possible to escape, to reinvent and to feel a sense of closeness however terrible things may be otherwise.

This is definitely a book I will share with both family and friends.

>12 Cecilturtle: I read it a while ago, but I also remember wondering if the introduction with the discussion of Sophia's parents being dead colored my reading of the book. I think I was looking for a note of sadness because of the introduction and I wonder if I would have noticed it as much if I hadn't read the intro first. To me, that detail added some depth to the book though, so overall I think I'm glad I knew to look for it.