Tag: The Summer Book

Tove Jansson: Books and beyond

ClaireLeave a comment

Tove Jansson’s work has inspired me in many areas of my life, and in that, I’m not alone.

This black-and-white photograph shows a page from the book Islands of Fantasy, published by the Tampere Art Museum. It features a photograph of Tove Jansson's cabin on her island Klovharu.
My first glimpse of Tove Jansson’s island, Klovharu, pictured in the book Islands of Fantasy, published by the Tampere Art Museum.

Following my serendipitous discovery of The Summer Book, Tove Jansson’s best-known book for adults, I became fascinated by the world she wrote of.

The world she wrote of and, as it turned out, the world she inhabited.

New York Review Books describes The Summer Book as “the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland.”

Tove Jansson and her partner, graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä, spent almost 30 summers on Klovharu, an even tinier and more remote island in the same archipelago.

That lonely island in the sea? Well, it was perhaps created less because I didn’t like people than because I did like the sea. And if I am now moving out to an even smaller island out in the Finnish archipelago, it is because I have grown even fonder of the sea.

Tove Jansson quoted in the book “Tove Jansson” by W. Glyn Jones, published in the Twayne’s World Authors Series, 1984.

My fascination with Jansson’s island world turned into an exciting period of research and discovery, which coincided with a time of renewed interest in her work in the English-speaking world (she had died several years earlier, in 2001, at the age of 86). I read every book and article I could find.

I got my first real glimpse of her island life in Islands of Fantasy, a book published by the Tampere Art Museum in 2003 to accompany an exhibit of Jansson’s work by the same name. It came as a revelation. The photos of the island contained in the book, and its themes of solitude and creativity, spoke to me directly — it was as if I had found the kind of language and connection I had been looking for all my life.

This colour photo shows a pink mug on a cafe table. The mug features the Moomin character Too-ticky.
My favourite Moomin mug, featuring the wise and pragmatic Too-ticky as she appears in Moominland Midwinter.

I was also given a copy of Moomins at Arabia: Stories in Ceramics 1957–2005, published by WSOY to accompany an exhibition of the Moomin-themed ceramic products produced by Finnish design company Arabia.

Best known among these products are the series of Moomin mugs beloved by fans around the world (these mugs have even inspired a dedicated series of blog posts).

In the kind of story of connection that seems woven throughout Moomin lore, these popular mugs have been designed with great care by ceramic artist and illustrator Tove Slotte since they were first produced almost 30 years ago.

Slotte grew up with the Moomin stories and was often asked if she was named after Tove Jansson. She wasn’t, but writes in Moomins at Arabia that as Tove is not a very common name in Finland, she always felt that something of her destiny lies in the name.

“I considered the Moomins to be holy, almost,” she says in Art of the Line, a documentary about her work on Arabia’s line of Moomin ware.

It’s difficult for me to imagine what kind of life I would’ve had if I hadn’t been making Moomin mugs…It has given me an opportunity to live the way I live.

Designer Tove Slotte in Art of the Line, a documentary about her work on Arabia’s line of Moomin ware.

In Moomins at Arabia, Tove Slotte describes a visit she paid to Tove Jansson early in Slotte’s career. She and her manager, Christel Vaenerberg, met with Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä in Pietilä’s apartment shortly after Arabia stared to produce Moomin-themed ceramic products.

“When we were leaving,” writes Slotte, “she [Jansson] asked me for my telephone number, and I replied that Vaenerberg really is the one who “holds all the threads in her hands.” Tove Jansson then said very kindly: “But I would like to have your threads as well.”
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Ceramic artist Tove Slotte talks about her work on Arabia’s Moomin mugs:

Discovering the work of Tove Jansson

ClaireLeave a comment

I would love to weave a quaint little tale about how I first discovered Tove Jansson’s work in a charming independent bookstore, but that isn’t how the story goes.

This colour photo shows the inside of the eclectic coffee shop, Oakwood Espresso.
Oakwood Espresso, one of the top 50 independent coffee shops in Toronto.

I did, though, take photos for this post at Toronto’s Oakwood Espresso, a charming independent coffee shop. So I’ll start with a picture of this beloved local meeting place to shore us up for a dive into the world of big-box chain bookstores.

I was living in Oxford, England, and working at Oxford University Press, when I encountered Tove Jansson’s work for the first time.

Although I’ve been a keen reader since childhood, I had never heard of her — I wasn’t even acquainted with the internationally renowned Moomin series of children’s books for which she is best known.

Toward the end of one of my Saturday meanderings through Oxford — a city with no shortage of beautiful bookstores — I found myself, for reasons I can’t explain, wandering into the nondescript big-box Borders Books.

A masterpiece of microcosm, a perfection of the small, quiet read.

From Ali Smith’s Guardian review of The Summer Book
This colour photograph shows the 2003 edition of The Summer Book published by Sort of Books. The cover features a photo of a tiny island.
Published by Sort of Books in 2003.

I had just passed the line of impatient customers waiting at the checkout when I spotted, dotting the end of a heavy, industrial-sized bookcase, what looked like a series of bright blue jewels. I was drawn to them like a magnet.

The jewels turned out to be copies of the 2003 reissue of The Summer Book, published by Sort of Books two years after Jansson’s death (she died in 2001 at the age of 86).

As Sort of Books so aptly describes, The Summer Book book is the story of “An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter [as they] while away a summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other’s fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges – one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself.”

This colour photograph shows the cover of the paperback edition of The Summer Book, published by New York Review Books in 2008. The cover features an illustration of a tiny island.
Published by New York Review Books in 2008.

In her Guardian review of this glittering edition, Ali Smith touches on the incongruity of seeing a gem like The Summer Book be released into the noisy culture of what she called these chainstore times:

“What a strange media heist it all is. What a huge noise it makes. It makes a reissue of Tove Jansson’s 1972 novel The Summer Book seem like a butterfly released into a room full of elephants; it makes such a reissue – a masterpiece of microcosm, a perfection of the small, quiet read – even more of a relief.”

I now have three editions of The Summer Book on my shelf:

This colour photograph shows the cover of the 1974 edition of The Summer Book published by Pantheon Books. Instead of an image, the cover features the name of the book and the author in blue and green script.
Published by Pantheon Books in 1974.

While the three publishers take a different approach to their cover design, I think the “butterfly” nature of each edition is obvious.

There are no elephants here.

Tove Jansson writes with a special toughness and lack of sentiment, and with a quiet, almost drastic sense of humour about life perceived through these two people at its extremes; one just beginning, the other about to end.

Quote from Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from the front flap of the 1974 edition of The Summer Book published by Pantheon Books.

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The UK film adaptation of Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book will be filmed in Finland in 2019: