"The Summer Book" by Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson is the lady who also wrote the Moomin series of children's books. This was for adults.

Sophia is a young girl who lives in the summer with her father (who is a very shadowy characters who works at his desk and fishes from his boat) and her grandmother who has problems with her balance. Her mother is dead. She roams the island, swimming and playing and talking with grandmother. Because she is a little girl she does not understand everything, she is frightened of things like sleeping alone in a tent, she is petulant and shouts at her grandmother. Her grandmother is wise, although she too can be petulant and selfish.

This is a beautifully written book about growing up with nature and about the relationship between members of the same family.

Lyrical and thought-provoking. The foreword is by Esther Freud who wrote that other wonderful tale about a child's relationship with her mother: Hideous Kinky.