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 There is a father, too — withdrawn, since his wife, without explanation, died.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.