I finished Tove Jansson's The Summer Book on this summer solstice. It's about a grandmother and her granddaughter spending the summer together on a small island in the Gulf of Finland.
The little girl's mother has recently died. That death lingers in the background as the days languidly pass and life goes on. The book is gentle and tender, written when Jansson was in her 50s as she was grieving her own mother's death.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
Everything was salvaged, some by the right hands and some by the wrong, but nothing was simply lost.
That’s strange, Grandmother thought. I can’t describe things any more. I can’t find the words, or maybe it’s just that I’m not trying hard enough. It was such a long time ago. No one here was even born. And unless I tell it because I want to, it’s as if it never happened; it gets closed off and then it’s lost.
More birds cried in various ways, and the darkness was filled with strange movements and sounds, the kind no one can trace or account for. The kind no one can even describe.
Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realize that they had forgotten.
Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he’s been through; it is a sheath of memories and security.
In the sky, the last red clouds sank into the yellow ones, making orange. The forest was full of signs and portents, its own secret written language.
"There is a Light That Never Goes Out" covered by Trespassers William