Tove Jansson's The Summer Book
Anyone familiar with Jansson's famous Moomins will recognise the humour in these stories which are a series of essay/sketches like a collection of watercolours, but with a sudden stab of the bold and brilliant. They are profound and funny, and following the adventures of the child Sophia and her elderly grandmother on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland, they cleverly capture the cantankerousness of both youth and old age: "Wise as she was, [grandmother] realised that people can postpone their rebellious phases until they're eighty five years old, and she decided to keep an eye on herself."
Sophia and grandmother discuss everything from whether God has secretaries, to the plight of halved worms and the frailty of moss (step on it three times and it dies), and all the while the island's vulnerability and isolation focus the stories inward. In her introduction, Esther Freud says the book's allure "is the allure of summer itself for [Scandinavians] who spend so much of the year in the dark." It is equally appealing to the rest of us.
