At a slim 170 pages, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson – beloved author of
the Moomintroll comic strips and books – is the beach book of, well, every summer.
Jansson wrote The Summer Book in 1972, and it was translated from Swedish
to English in 1974. (Yes, the same year that Richard M. Nixon resigned from
office.)
Much simpler times. All the more reason to pick up and read the island
stories of Sophia and her Grandma. What happens? A road is built, there are
storms, a bird-killing cat, a subdued girl visitor who takes some getting used
to …
A sample. (Imagine the road to be Trump’s wall …)
The Road
It was a bulldozer: an enormous, infernal, bright yellow machine that
thundered and roared and floundered through the woods with clanging jaws. The
men from the village scrambled on and around it like hysterical ants, trying to
keep it headed in the right direction. “Jesus Christ!” Sophia shrieked without
hearing what she said. She ran behind a rock with the milk can in one hand and
watched the machine pluck up huge boulders that had lain in their moss for a
thousand years, but now they just rose in the air and were tossed to one side,
and there was a terrible cracking and splintering as pine trees gave way and
were ripped from the ground with torn and broken roots. “Jesus, help! There go
the woods!”
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