Book Review
Dec. 14th, 2018 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariThe Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey
This beautiful novel is inspired by a Russian fairy tale but set in 1920s Alaska, where older couple Mabel and Jack have moved to start a new life where they can live more self-sufficiently and perhaps move forward from their grief over a past stillbirth and their subsequent childlessness. However, the labor and loneliness of their remote homestead starts to drive them apart. In a lighter moment, they build a child out of snow one night, but in the morning find the snow child gone and a little girl running in the woods. The girl, Faina, is mysterious and both capable and happy to live out in the woods on her own. Jack and Mabel slowly learn to understand her and she gradually becomes like a daughter to them. Paralleling their developing relationship to Faina is their growing friendship with their nearest neighbors, George, Esther, and their son Garrett.
I loved this book. The characters are so real and true. I loved the relationship between Mabel and Jack - their love for each other was always there even when things weren't working well between them, and Ivey did a great job of capturing the dynamics between people who have been together for a long time. I also really liked Faina. She is equal parts fairy-tale creature and clever, tough outdoorswoman. Alaska itself is almost a character, too, with its beauties and dangers. I read this in winter, so it was easy to feel the cold and snow, but the feeling of place and atmosphere is so strong that I'm sure I would have felt it all the same in a heat wave.
There's a wonderful subtlety to the narrative and Ivey's prose, too. It doesn't blaze off the page like some of my other favorite writing, but it nonetheless grabs hold of you and pulls you in. The magical, fairy-tale elements are less elements of fantasy than an odd not entirely explainable situation. Ivey gently weaves themes of survival, loneliness, connection, and family throughout.
by Eowyn Ivey
This beautiful novel is inspired by a Russian fairy tale but set in 1920s Alaska, where older couple Mabel and Jack have moved to start a new life where they can live more self-sufficiently and perhaps move forward from their grief over a past stillbirth and their subsequent childlessness. However, the labor and loneliness of their remote homestead starts to drive them apart. In a lighter moment, they build a child out of snow one night, but in the morning find the snow child gone and a little girl running in the woods. The girl, Faina, is mysterious and both capable and happy to live out in the woods on her own. Jack and Mabel slowly learn to understand her and she gradually becomes like a daughter to them. Paralleling their developing relationship to Faina is their growing friendship with their nearest neighbors, George, Esther, and their son Garrett.
I loved this book. The characters are so real and true. I loved the relationship between Mabel and Jack - their love for each other was always there even when things weren't working well between them, and Ivey did a great job of capturing the dynamics between people who have been together for a long time. I also really liked Faina. She is equal parts fairy-tale creature and clever, tough outdoorswoman. Alaska itself is almost a character, too, with its beauties and dangers. I read this in winter, so it was easy to feel the cold and snow, but the feeling of place and atmosphere is so strong that I'm sure I would have felt it all the same in a heat wave.
There's a wonderful subtlety to the narrative and Ivey's prose, too. It doesn't blaze off the page like some of my other favorite writing, but it nonetheless grabs hold of you and pulls you in. The magical, fairy-tale elements are less elements of fantasy than an odd not entirely explainable situation. Ivey gently weaves themes of survival, loneliness, connection, and family throughout.
