This is one of my favourite books. The summers spent in remote islands, and the life and ponderings of Sophia and her paternal grandmother.
Tove Jansson shows us why she is an author to be reckoned with, also for adult readers. This copy contains some photoes as well, all from Jansson's family & private collection.

I hope you enjoy the book as much as I do! (and I write I do, as I tend to read this book every two or three years).

arrived in my mailbox today! thank you so much, you chose very well - I read her book Travelling Light last year and liked it very much (it has that famous photograph of her head bobbing up in the water in front of a little house). I've also read the Moomins, of course.

It would have been wonderful to have it at the airport but never mind - I am going on another trip next week in a coach and will take it with me to while away the hours!

And to day the sun is shining, the sky is as blue as on the cover, so it is very appropriate.

You must have been in our OBCZ Le Délice, with a view of the cathedral through the windows. A lovely place, home-cooked food and the best cheesecake in Lausanne. I don't remember anything about the orienteering event but maybe it was up at the Olympic Stadium - I live very close to it.

This is the only book I have read so far in May; not that it's thick, but it took me a long while to get to the end, because I savoured it slowly, chapter by chapter. The wilful and impassioned girl Sophia, bursting with love and hatred, sometimes petulant, very much like her (quiet but very understanding) grandmother must have been when younger, is delightful; I love how they interact with each other and get so close to the stones and plants and earth of the island, observing the slightest changes. Jansson has a knack of adding a few words in the last sentence of each chapter that shoots everything you have just read into a completely different perspective - a trait I noticed in Travelling Light. She calls this a novel; I felt as if it were more like a journal of reminiscences.

I shall read it again, at least once if not more.

This book has given me much pleasure; it is now time for it to find another reader, even though it tugs at my heartstrings a little to give it away. But... as I will be in Finland, maybe it will make a good memory for someone.

A wonderful book to choose for our book exchange and so well described that I had to select it, specially after visiting the Moomin Museum earlier in the day.
I was very happy to steal it back on the final attempt and look forward to savouring the story.