Black Woods, Blue Sky

Single mother Birdie is a waitress at a lodge with a bar and café. On her breaks, she looks out across the Alaskan mountains and dreams of a different life. When Arthur, a quiet and solitary man, starts coming to the café for breakfast, she is drawn to him, and to his life in a rustic mountain cabin accessible only by small aircraft. Can this be the new life she has dreamed of for herself and Emaleen, her six-year-old daughter? Her friends warn her that Arthur has deeply hidden secrets and that she may be putting herself in a perilous situation. Is Birdie's fresh start worth the danger of moving to a remote cabin with a man who's still very much a stranger?

I have such mixed feelings about this book. I think it made it onto my reading show more list because of the fairy tale elements, as I'm a big reader of fairy tale retellings. The writing is strong, particularly the descriptions of the Alaskan setting, beautiful and wild and deadly. I didn't find Birdie likable or relatable, and couldn't help but feel that she was taking advantage of Arthur -- not that disliking a character is necessarily a negative; I think Ivey succeeded in what she set out to do with Birdie's character. It's just that, had this not been billed as a fairy tale retelling, it's probably not the kind of book that would have appealed to me. Another reader might have an entirely different experience with it -- so if you're intrigued, don't let me stop you. show less

It’s a bit of a miss for me. It didn’t feel original or well-resolved, but the biggest sin was that it was boring. The story leans heavily into child neglect and domestic abuse, thinly veiled as magical realism, but it didn’t feel well-handled, moving, or particularly deep. There’s this uncomfortable tension where we’re expected to accept that the main character is "doing her best" while also justifying reckless decisions in the name of love. Which is it? The supporting cast only seemed to enable these selfish, unrealistic choices, and the adults who should have known better felt complicit rather than wise. It was clear early on where the plot was headed, with heavy-handed foreshadowing that left no room for surprises. show more Character development was practically nonexistent. No one seemed to learn or grow, but not in a way that felt intentional or thought-provoking, it just fell flat.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for access to this book. show less

Birdie is a boozy, cigarette-smoking, flirtatious waitress at a bar in an Alaskan roadside bar, who dreams of a better life in the mountains.

Emaleen is her six-year daughter. Every other chapter is from Emaleen's perspective.

Arthur is a shaggy, eccentric loner who becomes infatuated with Birdie.

When Birdie decides to move in with Arthur in his remote cabin, we see the trainwreck coming.

In Black Woods, Blue Sky, Ivey returns to the concept that made her first novel, The Snow Child, so appealing: take a legend or myth and place it in a contemporary Alaskan setting. I loved the Snow Child, and I found this book compelling in its own way. The plot is not a surprise, although it is suspenseful; it's the characters and how deeply Ivey makes show more me feel for them that draws me to her books. An Alaskan herself, Ivey writes of the people and the landscape with warmth and a compassion for human failings and respect for the unflinching ways of nature. The aching, enduring love of parents for their unusual adopted children and the powerful love that can develop between two very dissimilar people are two of the themes that run through Ivey's works.

Recommended for readers open to reinterpretations of myths and folk tales. show less

Black Woods, Blue Sky is a novel of magic, empathy, and curiosity--in fact, each of Ivey's characters here brim with such empathy and curiosity that, even in their most flawed or dangerous moments, it's impossible for a reader not to sympathize with them and home for good. With those characters carrying the story, and with Ivey's gorgeous writing of the Alaskan wilderness and a way of life that's foreign to most of us, the novel paints a world that feels as magical as it is real, and when the magic does come in...well, that feels very real as a result.

I suspected from the beginning that this work might break my heart open, and it did, but Ivey's storytelling is such that I can only smile at the experience through the tears, and be left show more in wonder at her storytelling and the way this book unfolds.

Absolutely recommended, whether you come for the writing, the magical realism, or the contemporary fairy tale or the Alaskan wilderness or anything else that might draw you in. This is a wonderous book. show less

This was a disconcerting, uncomfortable read. It wasn't quite like watching a horror movie and thinking "Don't do that thing you're about to do!" every time a character walks into danger, but Birdie's stupid and reckless decisions kept me uneasy the entire book. I wouldn't say this was an enjoyable read, exactly, but it was brilliantly executed. This would be an excellent book club pick.

“Birdie, Arthur. Mother. Bear.”

This is a hard book to review for me. Overall, I loved the writing, the settings, the strange character of Arthur, and the bear. I almost felt like I was actually in Alaska as the story progressed!

But... Birdie may well be the worst mother I've ever read about in a book. Her character is almost a caricature of what a terrible mother would be. Ridiculously terrible decisions after terrible decisions. Each one pulling me out of the story and ruining what would otherwise have been a really good read for me. I know there are people in the world like that, but I just couldn't believe that her character would be so dumb and so out of touch about the safety of her daughter. Really hard to believe.

This new novel by one of my favorite modern authors was a VERY mixed bag for me. Ivey is known for weaving a fairy tale element into her works, but this one was a bit too gritty and dark for me.

Like all of Ivey's novels, this is set in remote Alaska. Birdie is a young woman with a 6 year old daughter who is craving something different than her life waitressing at a lodge and barely making ends meet. She meets Arthur, a mysterious man with a prominent scar and odd way of speaking only in the present. Arthur lives in an even more remote part of Alaska, and Birdie and her daughter Emmaleen decide to join him there. The reader already understands that things are not quite right with Arthur, and Emmaleen and then Birdie, start to understand show more as well. Things do not end well.

The plot seemed to be loosely related to a "Jungle Book" type story, with a human being raised by an animal, and a "Beauty and the Beast" idea. But Arthurs's lifestyle (if I can call it such?) was just so gruesome to me, I couldn't enjoy the book. There is a final section, also, where Emmaleen returns to Alaska as an adult that I thought really could have made the book work for me, but then the way it went was disappointing, I thought.

Eowyn Ivey's writing still managed to pull me in, despite my distaste for the plot. Her nature writing of Alaska is beautiful, which also helped. But I was disappointed in this book. show less