Like the clear, brilliantly blue sky that hangs over the small island on which it’s set, The Summer Book is 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.” In The 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, and The Summer Book is her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.

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