Magic in the Gulf of Finland

Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book had been published before in this country, but when, two years ago, the enterprising Sort of Books reissued it for the first time in many years, it seemed that its moment had come. I pressed it on a lot of people, often to find that they, too, had discovered this extra- ordinary masterpiece. Something about its quality of rootedness, of unnarrated exploration of a tiny territory strikes a chord just now. It is the opposite of escapist; rather, a hymn of praise to the scrap of land wherever we may find ourselves.

It’s a book of the utmost simplicity, and almost without discernible plot. A grandmother and her grand-daughter spend their summers on a minuscule island in the Gulf of Finland. There is a father, too — withdrawn, since his wife, without explanation, died. The women, both old and young, examine their island, take small journeys, shore themselves up as best they can against the irruptions of the modern world, people who don’t know the correct way of doing things when living with the sea. The magic of the book is that it is utterly exact and specific about all aspects of its landscape, but remains tantalisingly ambiguous about the emotions which underlie the relationships of its highly taciturn cast.

The power of The Summer Book shouldn’t have come as a surprise to respectful readers of Tove Jansson’s well-known Moomin books. As an author and illustrator, she wrote a series of these between 1945 and 1970. They are generally remembered as being charming or even a little bit cutesy — books for very young children about the little adventures of creatures rather like stuffed toys. (You can, if you wish, take your children to visit a horrid-looking theme park in Naantali. If they enjoy themselves, frankly you should leave them there.)