{"id":4370,"date":"2023-11-14T23:02:40","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T10:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=4370"},"modified":"2025-05-31T18:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T06:53:07","slug":"the-summer-book-tove-jansson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2023\/11\/14\/the-summer-book-tove-jansson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Summer Book \u2013 Tove Jansson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This wise and wistful book narrates many episodes in the life of an old woman living with her young granddaughter Sophia on a remote Finnish island. The relationship between the two is sweet, yet unsentimental. Sophia\u2019s father lives with them too, but he is often away and the two are left to themselves in the isolated and harsh environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jansson depicts Sophia\u2019s bluff seriousness very well. She reminds me of the children in another classic Nordic book: All the Dear Little Animals<\/em> by the Swedish writer Ulf Nilsson. Maybe the writers in that part of the world are good at writing child characters. Or maybe the kids in that part of the world incline more to that personality type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But apart from Sophia, Grandmother is really the main character. We gather a lot of her attitudes to life, growing old, and her family. She definitely does not romanticise their lifestyle, but it still holds some appeal for me. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s still possible to live like that \u2013 this book was written 50 years ago \u2013 so it\u2019s unlikely I will ever get to find out for myself. Still, Jansson wrote many more books (as well as the wonderful Moomin comic books) so at least I can still read myself into that way of life.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This wise and wistful book narrates many episodes in the life of an old woman living with her young granddaughter Sophia on a remote Finnish island. The relationship between the two is sweet, yet unsentimental. Sophia\u2019s father lives with them … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,63,237],"class_list":["post-4370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-books","tag-novels","tag-tove-jansson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4370"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4484,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370\/revisions\/4484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}