Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... La niña de nieve (original 2012; edition 2012)by Eowyn Ivery
Work InformationThe Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (2012)
Top Five Books of 2013 (114) » 34 more Top Five Books of 2020 (163) Books Read in 2020 (287) Magic Realism (112) Books Read in 2015 (507) Books Read in 2017 (702) Books Read in 2016 (2,416) Female Author (580) Carole's List (195) Books Read in 2018 (3,147) Books Read in 2023 (3,660) Books Read in 2024 (1,017) Historical Fiction (824) Five star books (1,292) First Novels (184) Winter Books (7) To Read (448) 5 Best 5 Years (53) A Novel Cure (528) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. So, I like magical realism, I enjoy a good literary fiction every now and then, I’m intrigued by historical Alaska, and I also like a good fairytale retelling now and again. This is the tale of Mabel and Jack, who have moved to the Alaskan wilderness in the 1920s to start their lives anew, after a death in the family. They’ve always wanted a child, and one day, make a small snow-girl….the next day it’s gone, and a little blond girl has appeared, coming to them each winter, the child that the couple never had. But the question of the story is, is she real? Is she the fabled Snow Child, or perhaps a human-fairy hybrid? This is a sad, haunting, and beautifully written book that’s the perfect read for cold, dark winter days. The sense of isolation is very real in this book. The descriptions of the wilderness are so vivid, as is Mabel and Jack’s grief. The relationship with Faina, the child, and their new friends was a joy to read. Faina is mysterious and we never learn much about her. The story takes place over about a decade, and I enjoyed reading about Mabel and Jack and their friends growing, both emotionally and physically. The ending is left quite vague, though, still adding to that sense of wonder. Yet it frustrated me because I like more concrete endings. I didn’t care for all the descriptions of hunting animals, but I understand that this is set in the wilderness in the 1920s, and this was how people survived. Some parts in the middle were very slow. It’s definitely a different type of read. But if you love magical realism and fairytale retellings and want a truly atmospheric setting with beautiful prose, give this a try.
"Inspired by the Russian fairy tale The Snow Maiden, Eowyn Ivey's deubut novel, The Snow Child (Back Bay: Little, Brown. 2012. ISBN 9780316175661. pap. $14.99; ebk. ISBN 9780316192958), features Jack and Mabel, a childless couple grieving their infant son's death. ...richly evokes landscape and nature as it explores the many types of families that find their way into being." when I was wiping my eyes at the end — must have been snow blowing in my face — I felt sorry to see these kind people go. Sad as the story often is, with its haunting fairy-tale ending, what I remember best are the scenes of unabashed joy. That isn’t a feeling literary fiction seems to have much use for, but Ivey conveys surprising moments of happiness with such heartfelt conviction. Mabel’s sister puts it well in a letter from Pennsylvania: “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.” You’ll catch that same magic in the leaves of this book. Ivey's delightful invention hovers somewhere between myth and naturalism — and the effect this creates is mesmerizing.... A chilly setting? Yes. A sad tale? This terrific novelistic debut will convince you that in some cases, a fantastic story — with tinges of sadness and a mysterious onward-pulsing life force — may be best for this, or any, season. Once you've revelled in these ambiguities, though, there's a problem with The Snow Child: there isn't a lot more to it. Ivey touches on the question of what it means to be a parent – the impossible desire to capture and tame the very thing you must set free – but only fleetingly, with more imagery than depth. This is pure storytelling, refreshingly ungilded and sympathetic, but little more The book’s tone throughout has a lovely push and pull—Alaska’s punishing landscape and rough-hewn residents pitted against Faina’s charmed appearances—and the ending is both surprising and earned. Awards
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.--From Amazon. No library descriptions found.
|
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
Jack and Mabel have just picked up from their Pennsylvania home and taken on a homestead in Alaska. Married late (for the time) in their thirties, they suffered a stillborn child and now in their late forties, childless, they are fleeing from their mostly silent grief and unfulfilled dreams of a family. They are great characters and their sometimes difficult yet always tender relationship is wonderfully developed.
On the night of the first big snow of the winter season, as they are struggling mightily to carve out a foothold in the Alaskan wilderness and their ability to make a go of it is in deep doubt, they make a snowgirl in a moment of levity. The next morning it has been destroyed, the mittens and scarf they placed on it gone, and they begin to see a child running among the trees and sometimes coming to their cabin. Naturally, she is wearing the mittens and scarf.
Here we learn that this story has been based on a Russian folk tale in which an old childless couple makes a girl out of the snow, who then comes to life as the daughter they never had. The story does not end well, the girl eventually melting away/tragically disappearing, either due to getting too warm or falling in mortal love.
Is this what has happened to Jack and Mabel? Mabel believes so. Jack meanwhile learns of another tragic possibility. Which one does the author ultimately intend? She'll keep you guessing. Thus far it is a brilliant novel: great characters, a great well sketched setting the author is intimately familiar with (being a native Alaskan), and an intriguing magically tinged story.
To follow the outlines of the fairy tale, something has to befall the girl. Having her melt at a campfire probably wouldn't work, so Ivey takes the reasonable path of having the girl grow into her late teens and fall in love. Unfortunately for me this is where the novel lost a lot of its charm and magic and became somewhat dreary. Her love interest is a boring character, and the lovestruck teenage girl comes off worse on the written page than a mysterious snow pixie child.
But all in all, still a really good read. ( )