Compare and Contrast – by Gillian Bouras

There are twenty-two vignettes in [The Summer Book by Tove Jansson], and the threads that bind them together are Grandmother and her six-year-old granddaughter, Sophia. Grandmother is nearing the end of her life, but Sophia is beginning hers, and is at the stage we all go through, that of thinking some seasons and routines are going to last and repeat themselves forever. But in sharp contrast, Grandmother feels that everything is gliding away from her. The book seems to be about nothing very much, but is about everything, about the ways in which life is lived over time … [W]hereas Sophia had a grandmother who taught her all sorts of things, I had my grandfather …