September Book Club - The Summer Book

Join us this month to discuss The Summer Book at our September book club! 

When: 24/9/26 18:00 start, doors open from 17:50

OR 26/9/26 10:00 start, doors open from 9:50

Where: 26a Crwys Road, CF24 4NL

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You can order the book here to pick up from the shop. 

The Summer Book - £10.99

Book club discount, 10% off - £9.89

Tickets to the book club are free but we would like you to register so that we can keep track of numbers. As it is a free event we would appreciate if you bought the book from us as that allows us to keep running events like this. However if you have a copy already feel free to sign up for just a ticket.

If you would like to book a place but you already have the book you can do that here.

Once you have signed up we will send you an email confirmation (this is separate to the automatic email from Shopify to confirm payment). We will then send an email when the book is ready to pick up. This may be included in the initial email if we already have the stock.

Translated fiction book club runs every other month, the months in between we have a general book club. 

About the book:

Tove Jansson's classic, bestselling novel. The Worldwide Classic about a tiny island and larger love. An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges - one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself.

Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour, and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. With a foreword by Esther Freud and an afterword by Sophia Jansson (on whom the child 'Sophia' is based) who returns to the island during the pandemic at the point of becoming a grandmother herself.

Includes a 15pp epilogue by Tove's niece Sophia Jansson - the inspiration for 'Sophia' - on a personal and moving return to the island.

'Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life.' Esther Freud

'Tove Jansson was a genius. This is a marvellous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny.' Philip Pullman

About the author:

The writer and artist Tove Jansson (1914–2001) is best known as the creator of the Moomin stories, which were first published in English sixty years ago and have remained in print ever since. In her fifties, Tove Jansson turned her attention to writing for adults, producing a dozen novels and story collections, including the classic, bestselling The Summer Book.

About the translator:

Thomas Teal has translated more than twenty books from Swedish, including at least six by Tove Jansson, whom he knew when he lived in Finland in the 1960s. In 2011, he won the Best Translated Book Award and has won the Bernard Shaw Translation Prize twice, all three for works by Jansson.

Accessibility:

We ask in our confirmation email if you have any access needs, we will do everything we can to accommodate them. If you would like to reach out before booking you can email us lily@bookspacecardiff.co.uk or use our contact form.

We are wheelchair accessible. We have a temporary ramp we can put out to get in over the small step and once inside the shop floor is even. If you want to find out more about how to get here, check out our about page.