The Summer Book

Sophia and her grandmother spend a summer on a small island in the Gulf of Finland, digging, arguing, building a miniature Venice out of moss, and circling the fact that Sophia’s mother has recently died, which the book mentions once and never labours. Jansson, best known outside Scandinavia for the Moomins, wrote it after losing her own mother, and it is structured as twenty-two short chapters rather than a plot. The result is one of the least sentimental books ever written about grief and childhood.