Here are two novels I like that are set in other beautiful
summer places:
Written by the Finnish author who wrote the children’s
classics about the Moomins, this novel
written for adults, is very different
from the beloved tales of the hippopotamus-like trolls. An
artist and grandmother spends the summer with her six-year-old granddaughter,
Sophia, on a tiny island off the coast of Finland. Sophia is mourning the recent death of her
mother. They pass their days exploring
tide pools and talking about nature and life – talking about everything except
their feelings about the mother’s death and the love they have for each other.
Both are fiercely independent and temperamental. Jansson captures that unique friendship that
sometimes develops between the very old and the very young. Totally unsentimental, this is a book of
gentle wisdom and humour. It’s been
called “a perfection of the small, quiet read”.
David Macfarlane’s
“Summer Gone”
Barbara Jo
Set among the islands and lakes of Ontario’s “cottage
country” and farther North, “Summer
Gone” is the story of a divorced father
and his son who are trying to mend their difficult relationship on a canoe
trip. The father reflects on his own
boyhood canoe trips with his father and other trips he took with his ex-wife,
as much as he is in the present with his own son. It’s a story of three generations of lost summers
and how one event breaks the estrangement between father and son. Beautifully written, and Macfarlane describes
Northern Ontario so well it makes you want to sing Neil Young’s “Helpless”.
( If you are looking for car chases, whodunit’s, exploding
planets , or any kind of plot-driven book,
these aren’t good choices. But
if you are looking for something slower and more descriptive of human lives and
hearts, I would recommend either of these novels. )
My recommendation for THE
Okanagan summer movie : Sandy Wilson’s “My American Cousin”.
It’s a story based on Wilson’s girlhood experiences
in Naramata in the 1960s. It is evocative
of growing up anywhere in the Okanagan, and bang-on with the small details of
that time!
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| Photo from IMdb.com |
I saw the premiere at the Toronto
Film Festival, just after I had survived my first gritty & humid summer
there. The opening scene is shot at
sunset from the west side of Okanagan
Lake, with a sweeping view over the lake, then the
Naramata bench, then an orchard (with that distinctive noise of the overhead
sprinklers used in those days), then a busy family home lit up with all the
windows open. I burst out in sobs as it
made me so homesick! The rest of the
movie also made me weep - with laughter.
A funny and gentle coming-of-age story that anyone will enjoy, including
young adults.
Happy Summer, y’all! Barbara Jo
