The garden in fiction
On a tiny, salt-swept island in the Gulf of Finland there is a delicate balance between survival and extinction. It is rugged and rocky, sun-scorched and wind-battered. This is the setting of Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book. Perhaps better-known for her Moomin books (in which Moominmamma creates gardens out of seaweed, even once on a rocky lighthouse in the middle of the ocean), Jansson was also an exceptional author of adult fiction and shows herself to be a master observer of human behaviour in this quietly magical, life-affirming book.
The story follows a child, Sophia,
