I knew Tove Jansson from the Moomins. One of my most magical memories from childhood was the Moomins on TV. I was a bookworm even back in those days and no doubt will have read any of the books that were available.
Sadly, I just didn't particularly like this book. It's not badly written. The prose is actually very good. It's lyrical and poetic and all very nice. It's just not very interesting to this reader.
It's not what I would call a novel. It's a series of very short anecdotes about a little girl and her Grandmother living on an island off the coast of Norway in the summer months. There's no single story, no real continuity, not even any call backs to previous events. It all feels very choppy and episodic.
It's all very prettily written and lots of metaphors for life happen to the characters and it's all very meaningful and lovely. It has a deep ecological message from well before such things were fashionable. But this is one book where I have to admit that it wasn't written for me.
Sophia doesn't always ring true as a character. She's a preteen child but has chapters where she talks like a university lecturer.
For such a short book it took me a week to read it. I think if it had been close to 200 pages I would have given up. For all the nice writing, it's just too cloying and sentimental. There are a few laughs, but few and far between for me and the book never hooked my interest or made me care for Sophia or her Grandmother.
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