I recently watched a short snippet of the Australian version of Goggle Box where they were commenting on a programme that integrated four year olds and older people living in a home. The interactions between the two generations were a wonder to observe with the directness of the four year olds and the wisdom of the older people who were encouraged to do things they thought they could no longer do. The relationships formed were strong and powerful for both and so too in this book where six year old Sophia and her Grandmother spend the summer on their tiny Finnish island along with Sophia’s father who says nothing but tends his garden, his nets and works. It is eventually revealed that Sophia’s mother has died and this grief haunts the book.

Sophia and her Grandmother

The book revolves around these two characters, shifting from one to the other and showing a remarkable range of emotions from both although tolerance wins. Right from the first two pages we see Sophia as a direct, filterless individual helping her Grandmother to find her false teeth and then demanding to watch as she puts them back in. And straight after that event Sophia asks her Grandmother when she is going to die, reflecting the fact that death is present in her life, and needing reassurance that another person close to her is not going to die just yet. Grandmother, though, is elderly, wobbly on her feet, often dizzy and takes Lupatro which she must carry with her all the time. We see the next death on the horizon.

Sophia and her Grandmother are playful and imaginative, with her Grandmother fully entering into Sophia’s world and building their own worlds. Sophia is very taken with the idea of Venice sinking into the mud after receiving a postcard from a friend with a picture of it on the front. Together they build a sinking town with palaces and bridges with Grandmother continuing to create a trattoria and the Campanile. But we are on an island and life intrudes:

One day, there was a green salamander in the Grand Canal and the traffic had to make a long detour.

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The next day a big storm washes Venice away with Sophia howling over the loss of the Palace – the grief and loss rippling through like an undercurrent in almost every event. There’s a dream where suitcases open and float out to sea, an Angleworm chopped in two with each end scurrying away from the other. Over and over again, we see this loss played out in island life, sometimes gently, other times stormy.

The island as a character

Jansson creates a visual feast for us with the island, giving us the tiny worlds often seen because one or other of them is lying down, and making the island feel enormous with plenty to explore. There is the Magic Forest of dead trees which forms a ‘tangled mess of stubborn resignation’, the ravine deep and dark, the pasture and the ever present sea, over which storms approach.

The whole island was covered in fog and there was that special early May silence near the sea. The branches of the trees dripped water, clearly audible in the silence. Nothing was growing yet, and there were patches of snow in sheltered spaces, but the landscape was brimming with expectation.

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Nature is ever present and provides a world to explore for Sophia and her Grandmother but it also helps us to face our fears. Sophia decides to spend a night out in a tent on her own but the sounds and the darkness scare her back to Grandmother’s bed, or where she becomes scared of tiny insects, a fear that is fleeting but very real.

Rules and conventions

Sophia and her Grandmother break the rules for safe living constantly. From standing out on a rock promontary, swimming in deep water, not staying under a shade umbrella, smoking cigarettes (only Grandmother) and travelling down into the ravine, these all suggest exploration along with an acceptance of rules made to be broken. Neither Sophia or her Grandmother want to be constrained by the island or by what they discuss and so both are open and free.

The chapters about Berenice and The Cat both tell the same story in different ways. Berenice is a friend who comes to visit and who looks wonderful with curly hair and who Sophia gets to dive by pushing her in. It turns out that her hair can’t take salty water and it was only her hair that Sophia liked. The poor visitor, it turns out, was more scared of their wild ways than she was of the island, the insects or the sea.

An island is dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.

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The Cat story is about a kitten that Sophia takes in but who refuses to be tamed by her and lives a cat life. No cuddling or playing but hunting and sleeping. Called Moppy, it defied Sophia at every turn.

“It’s funny about love,” Sophia said. “The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.”

“That’s very true,”Grandmother observed. “And so what do you do?”

“You go on loving,” said Sophia threateningly. “You love harder and harder.”

Her Grandmother sighed and said nothing.

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But this cat looks like the island and so we know it is not just the cat we are talking about here.

He was the same colour as the island – a light yellow-ish grey with striped shadings like granite, or like sunlight on a sand bottom. When he slipped across the meadow by the beach, his progress was like a stroke of wind through the grass.

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Sophia gets so cross with the cat that they end up swapping it for a white, fluffy cat who only wants to cuddle, sleep and be inside. Everythind a cat should do. After screaming at the cat to be more like a cat – hunt, so something and be like a cat – they swap the cat back for Moppy. Sophia acknowledges that having Moppy back because of his behaviour will be awful but it is Moppy she loves. An acceptance of the way things are and that being conventional does not mean more lovable or desirable.

How writing style and content meet

The genre of this book is hard to tie down, breaking with conventions itself. It must have been revolutionary in 1972 when it was first published. Told in a series of vignettes, almost filmic and written in episodes, the writing plays with camera angle, the type of shot and atmosphere. It is direct and seemingly simple, yet has both a depth and understanding that keeps people rereading the book, some every summer. It is a quiet masterpiece whose ripples continue long after you have finished reading it. The best book I have read so far this year. Will The Winter Book be as good? Only one way to find out.