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the snow child Eowyn Ivey 9780755380534 Books

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the snow child Eowyn Ivey 9780755380534 Books

Eowyn Ivey's first novel "The Snow Child" (2012) tells the story of hardy settlers in the territory of Alaska in 1920 leavened with an adaptation of an old Russian fairy tell about a snow man that comes to life. The book explores the wildness of Alaska, the bitter winters, short summers, the rivers, mountains, and wild animals. It explores some of the reasons that motivated Americans to leave their lives in the lower 48 states to try their hand at a difficult new life. The story explores that independence and individualism of the settlers while also showing their efforts at community-building, cooperation, and friendship. The book captures something ethereal, wild, and mystical about the territory -- and perhaps about the nature of human community -- in the person of Faina, the snow girl.

The primary characters in the book are Jack and Mabel, in their early 50s, who have left their Pennsylvania home in search of a new life largely because they have no children. Jack and Mabel had different backgrounds. Jack had been a farmer with his family while Mabel was the educated and refined daughter of a professor of literature at the University of Pennsylvania. The couple is haunted by a child they lost at birth. They struggle in their early years as Alaska homesteaders with the hard winter and Mabel contemplates suicide. The couple slowly become friends with another immigrant family, George and Esther Benson, and their three sons, with the youngest, Garrett, 13, playing the most significant role in the story. Much of the realistic portion of the book is about the importance of friendship and working together in order to survive. The book turns to myth in a mysterious young girl, Faina, who lives in the woods and snow by herself but who gradually befriends Jack and Mabel. Faina disappears during the Spring. Much of the book describes the fondness Jack and Mabel develop towards this little winter sprite and about whether she is real or imaginary. Regardless, there is something undeniably preternatural about Faina.

The characters in the book are believable and poignant as the story explores loneliness, the search for love, difficulties in marriage, and setting out for something new. It also plays on themes of wildness -- in terms of Alaska's weather, topography violence, and emptiness -- as woven together with the efforts towards conventionality and settlement, in the life of the pioneers to tame the land and make a success of farming. The story is taken out of the realm of the everyday with the figure of Faina. Romance, mystery, and fate lie at the heart of things, certainly in this novel. Besides the adaptation of a Russian story, I was reminded of a work from a much different milieu -- Truman Capote's urbane little novel "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with its romance and its admonition to "never love a wild thing." America, not only the former territory of Alaska, is a mix of the real and ideal, the pedestrian and the mysterious.

Ivey writes in a simple style which for the most part is effective. The book seems to me overly long and it lags in places. But it does many things well, including the scenes of the wilderness, the young snow girl, and the near-estranged couple that manage to find a bittersweet redemption in the sparsely settled territory. In addition to the folktale like quality of much of the book, I enjoyed how the author was kind to place and characters. The book shows a love of wildness, a love of Alaska as territory and presumably as state, and a sense of people working together while preserving their autonomy. The affection and spirit of the book are inspiring given the polarization which plagues our country.

"The Snow Child" is a touching, poignant book about loneliness and mystery and about one way of pursuing and living out the American dream.

Robin Friedman


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the snow child Eowyn Ivey 9780755380534 Books Reviews

Having lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for 44 years, I was very anxious to read this book. It has an Alaskan theme and is touted as being written in the style of magical realism. I love literary fiction that is rich in characterization and language and this book has an abundance of both. It is bound to be one of the best books I'll read in 2012. The story is beautifully rendered and rich with metaphor. I could hardly bear to put it down.

Mabel and Jack are homesteaders who come to Alaska rather late in their lives. They are both close to fifty years old when they begin their Alaskan venture near the Wolverine river way in the backcountry. The story opens with Mabel contemplating suicide. She describes Alaska after her failed suicide attempt as a place of "beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed, if you lived at all". She and Jack are growing apart rather than closer and she misses him desperately. Slowly, they become friends with their closest neighbors, Esther and George, and this helps Mabel some. However, she says of Jack, "they were going to be partners, she and Jack. This was going to be their new life together. Now he sat laughing with strangers when he hadn't smiled at her in years".

Mabel comes from an intellectual family - her father is a professor of literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She feels lonely and empty in her cabin. Just before they came to Alaska she gave birth to a stillborn boy. This was one of the primary reasons she wanted to get away from her family. She felt they were always looking at her and judging her as wanting, talking about her as not being a strong woman. Jack is busy with clearing and farming the homestead and he won't let Mabel help with this. He sees her job as staying in the house to cook, clean and bake her pies. They are barely making ends meet and Jack is contemplating taking a part-time job in a mine next year. Their situation is dire.

The wilderness is described in an awe-inspiring ferocity of beauty and fear. "Wherever the work stopped, the wilderness was there, older, fiercer, stronger than any man could ever hope to be. The spindly black spruce were so dense in places you couldn't squeeze an arm between them, and every living thing seemed barbed and hostile." "Alaska gave up nothing easily. It was lean and wild and indifferent to a man's struggle." Alaska's beauty is also described wonderfully - the northern lights, the wild animals, the rivers, waterfalls, snowfalls and alpenglow. "Maybe that was how a man held up his end of the bargain, by learning and taking into his heart this strange wilderness - guarded and naked, violent and meek, tremulous in its greatness."

The work is too hard for Jack and Mabel is suffering from cabin fever. One night, however, in a lightness of spirit, they decide to build a snow child. It turns out to be a girl with a lovely face, blond hair, blue eyes and chiseled lovely features. Mabel gives it mittens and a scarf as well. Shortly after building the snow child, they begin to see a child darting in and out of the trees. The snow child they built has disappeared and the child they see running around is wearing the same clothes as their snow child had been given. Is she real or is it a hallucinatory figment of cabin fever and overwork? Mabel and Jack see the child, follow her footprints in the snow and even get to meet her. However, no one else has ever seen her and there is no other family living near them with a girl child. Where has she come from and where does she live?

The story loosely follows the metaphorical fairy tale of The Snow Child, Mabel's favorite story from childhood. However, Mabel is fearful of the story's outcome and does not want to look at the coincidences too closely. The girl they meet is named Faina - Fay-ee-na. They begin to grow close to her and their lives change. "Mabel was no longer sure of the child's age. She seemed both newly born and as old as the mountains, her eyes animated with unspoken thoughts, her face impassive. Here with the child in the trees, all things seemed possible and true."

This is a life-affirming book, one that is close to the heart. It is never silly or maudlin. The writing is rich and lyrical, the characterizations full and complete with each person known and mysterious at the same time. We follow each of them through joys and sorrow. In many ways this is a book of perfection, one that is consummate and incomparable to any other I have ever read. I know it will live on in me and that I will have to re-read it. Thank you Ms. Ivey for bringing me back to Alaska through your eyes. What a wonderful way to see this world.
The Snow Child is one of the most magical novels I have read during my long life. Ivey's characterization, story telling and scenic prowess are all delivered in words that sometimes whisper, often sing, occasionally growl and frequently entrance. There is simplicity, elegance, depth and meaning reaching mythic realms, and yet the story is firmly grounded in the realities of Alaskan homesteading and relationships that struggle, bend, grow and endure. One could love the book just for Ivey's loving portrayal of Alaska's scenery and animal life, but the five main characters and their challenges are finely drawn so it is difficult to stop reading. I would not call it a "page turner" because one would be a fool to rush through this. It is a book to be savored. Some scenes and events are so touching, one should pause to let their significance sink in. I found the story following me around during the hours I was not actually reading words on the page. I felt almost possessed. Ivey helps us to explore at least a dozen questions that have troubled or delighted people for centuries. I immediately purchased her second novel upon finishing this one, but I knew it would not be a sequel. She is just one of those writers whose pages shine like her character in this book — Faina — originally a Russian name meaning "shining."
Eowyn Ivey's first novel "The Snow Child" (2012) tells the story of hardy settlers in the territory of Alaska in 1920 leavened with an adaptation of an old Russian fairy tell about a snow man that comes to life. The book explores the wildness of Alaska, the bitter winters, short summers, the rivers, mountains, and wild animals. It explores some of the reasons that motivated Americans to leave their lives in the lower 48 states to try their hand at a difficult new life. The story explores that independence and individualism of the settlers while also showing their efforts at community-building, cooperation, and friendship. The book captures something ethereal, wild, and mystical about the territory -- and perhaps about the nature of human community -- in the person of Faina, the snow girl.

The primary characters in the book are Jack and Mabel, in their early 50s, who have left their Pennsylvania home in search of a new life largely because they have no children. Jack and Mabel had different backgrounds. Jack had been a farmer with his family while Mabel was the educated and refined daughter of a professor of literature at the University of Pennsylvania. The couple is haunted by a child they lost at birth. They struggle in their early years as Alaska homesteaders with the hard winter and Mabel contemplates suicide. The couple slowly become friends with another immigrant family, George and Esther Benson, and their three sons, with the youngest, Garrett, 13, playing the most significant role in the story. Much of the realistic portion of the book is about the importance of friendship and working together in order to survive. The book turns to myth in a mysterious young girl, Faina, who lives in the woods and snow by herself but who gradually befriends Jack and Mabel. Faina disappears during the Spring. Much of the book describes the fondness Jack and Mabel develop towards this little winter sprite and about whether she is real or imaginary. Regardless, there is something undeniably preternatural about Faina.

The characters in the book are believable and poignant as the story explores loneliness, the search for love, difficulties in marriage, and setting out for something new. It also plays on themes of wildness -- in terms of Alaska's weather, topography violence, and emptiness -- as woven together with the efforts towards conventionality and settlement, in the life of the pioneers to tame the land and make a success of farming. The story is taken out of the realm of the everyday with the figure of Faina. Romance, mystery, and fate lie at the heart of things, certainly in this novel. Besides the adaptation of a Russian story, I was reminded of a work from a much different milieu -- Truman Capote's urbane little novel "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with its romance and its admonition to "never love a wild thing." America, not only the former territory of Alaska, is a mix of the real and ideal, the pedestrian and the mysterious.

Ivey writes in a simple style which for the most part is effective. The book seems to me overly long and it lags in places. But it does many things well, including the scenes of the wilderness, the young snow girl, and the near-estranged couple that manage to find a bittersweet redemption in the sparsely settled territory. In addition to the folktale like quality of much of the book, I enjoyed how the author was kind to place and characters. The book shows a love of wildness, a love of Alaska as territory and presumably as state, and a sense of people working together while preserving their autonomy. The affection and spirit of the book are inspiring given the polarization which plagues our country.

"The Snow Child" is a touching, poignant book about loneliness and mystery and about one way of pursuing and living out the American dream.

Robin Friedman