The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey -386 pages
Book Blurb:
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart–he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone–but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
My Review: 4.5 stars
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What a unique book. Part fairy tale and part fiction make this a treasured story. The author did a fine job bringing the reader to the depths of the Alaskan wilderness. Truly wretched conditions are the background to this story in which love and the yearning for a child never had are at the forefront. Per the author, this story is a “retelling” of an old russian fairy tale in which there is obviously much artistic license. I loved Mabel’s cautious love for the snow child and how she learned to accept what she could get rather than want for more. The relationship between Jack and Mabel as well as how they pseudo parented Garrett Benson were very interesting subplots. If you can suspend reality, then you will enjoy this book very much. I highly recommend.
Quotes I liked:
We are allowed to do that, are we not Mabel? To invent our own endings and choose joy over sorrow?”
-“She had watched other women with infants and eventually understood what she craved: the boundless permission-no, the absolute necessity- to hold and kiss and stroke this tiny person. Cradling a swaddled infant in their arms, mothers would distractedly touch their lips to their babies’ foreheads. Passing their toddlers in a hall, mothers would tousle their hair even sweep them up in their arms and kiss them hard along their chins and necks until the children squealed with glee. Where else in life, Mabel wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon?”
-“You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers.”
-“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.”
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I loved this book too. Often, I feel a need to skim over parts of a book because I’m so anxious to find out how it ends. This one, however, I took my time with because the style of writing was so beautiful and lyrical. Reading this book made me reflect on my own relationships – with family, children, and friends. Thanks for writing about it!
Adrian
http://mydustyshelves.blogspot.com/
Adrian, Thanks for your thoughts on The Snow Child. I loved what I learned about Alaska too!