đ Tove and Tooti, who longed to have a simple and peaceful live, decided to move onto an island. The first island they chose, BredskĂ€r, was a perfect one, 'leafy and welcoming'. The way Tove described it, you'd think they have lived in paradise; 'with a little forest with a woodland path, a little beach with a safe place for the boat, even a little marsh with some tufts of cotton grass'. But unfortunately, they boasted about it to friends and relatives, and soon enough, people were coming to their island on holidays, and their live began crowded once more. The only solution is to find another inhabited island which would give them the solitude they had been craving. They found it in Klovharun, a skerry in the Gulf of Finland, that's 'shaped like an atoll', complete with a lagoon in the middle. For me, it is less inviting than BredskĂ€r, and I wonder whether Tove and Tooti had not regretted that they didn't keep secret about it in the first place - I would! Anyway, to make Klovharun habitable, they need to build a cabin. Problem aroused, they need permission from the Government to build, so they erected a tent meanwhile - it could be long to come, or didn't come anyway.
đ Then enter Brunström, who would help them building the cabin, and proved to be their true friend for thirty years. Brunström told them not to wait for permission, but start building anyway, which they did. The book consists of logs by Brunström and Tove, telling us how the cabin progressed. Midway building, the permission finally arrived, which they celebrated together. Later on Tove brought her eighty-year-old grandmother Ham to live with them on the island. I was afraid at first, it's hard for an elderly to live a rugged living on the island. But Ham is a bad-ass grandmother. I chuckled reading how, when the tent where she lived was flooded, she just laughed while wading ashore. đ My favorite part is when Tove and Tooti took a helicopter to another part of the island to experience the breaking-up of the ice - 'Unbelievable tabernacles floated by, driven by a mild south-west breeze, statuesque, glittering [...] And they changed colour whenever they felt like it - ice blue, green, and in the evening, orange. Early in the morning they could be pink'. It must have been a once-in-a-life-time experience, and it felt serene and magical. Pity they didn't witnessed the moment when the ice did crack. But maybe it would have been too much for them. They lived on the island until their seventies, when Tove realized that she was becoming afraid of the ocean and its power. It's time to say goodbye! Though living on that island doesn't seem attractive for me - too demanding - this little book is realistic and unique, written and illustrated wonderfully.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2
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