Point of View

The novel is narrated in the third-person, always from the perspective of Sophia, a six-year-old girl, or her elderly grandmother who is never given a name in the novel. She is consumed by loneliness as she attempts to navigate the combination of losing her mother so young and living on an isolated island in the Gulf of Finland with only her father and grandmother to keep her company. Tove Jansson does not place any limitations on the access to either Sophia or Grandmother’s inner thoughts, allowing the reader to understand their true motivations, fears, and conflicts. In her childlike manner, Sophia is always completely honest with the people in her life, and she speaks her mind despite how it might make others feel. Often, she does rub her grandmother the wrong way with her ill-concealed frustrations, but her grandmother always seems to know how...