In this magical debut, a couple’s lives are changed forever by the arrival of a little girl, wild and secretive, on their snowy doorstep. 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 … 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.
more
Transporting.
I recently pulled Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child off my shelf and revisited this wonderful novel. While I didn’t review it on my first reading, all these years later the story moved me even more than when the book launched. This time, I felt compelled to comment.
After losing their only child, middle-aged Mabel and Jack flee into dark Alaska isolation, physically enacting the bereft landscape of Mabel’s heart. Then a snow child appears, and Mabel’s connection with the ethereal Faina, though limited and apparently magical, revives her.
To avoid spoilers, let me simply say that the book illustrates how even when heartache transforms the landscape, even when fulfillment seems only an unlikely figment, and especially when relationships evade the presumed safety of control, hope can transform reality and can prove a beloved pipe dream true.
This book is beautifully drawn, heart-breaking and heart-making. I loved every page.
To me, this was just a totally engaging read and kept me turning the pages and entertained to the end.
This book is very much filled with characters like the people I grew up around. Though it is set in the 20’s, Alaska was only partially tamed by the time my family moved there in 1970. If you want a taste of what homesteading was like for the early Alaskans, this is a great book. It is also a modern fairy tale and to say more might be a spoiler so I will just say I laughed, I cried, I bonded with the characters in this story. It is beyond worth reading, I’d say you must read it.
The Snow Child is an extraordinary fairy tale for grown ups. Set in 1920’s Alaska, this fascinating story follows Jack and Mabel’s new move to a remote Alaskan wilderness homestead. While the childless couple struggle with the harsh elements of the Alaskan dark winters, solitude and the physical labors of farming, something magical happens. A small child seems to have been conjured from the snow with Jack and Mabel’s love.
The writing is both lyrical and emotionally charged, making this otherworldly novel hard to put down. Beautifully detailed from multiple perspectives, the author paints an unforgettable picture of the remote Alaskan outback and those who live there.
This exceptional novel is magical realism at it’s very best.
Pulitzer material!
Magical, whimsical, touching…
Without a doubt, one of my top five reads.
The Snow Child is one of my favorite magical realism novels. Eowyn Ivey pulls you into her characters’ lives with such detail and insight that you feel like you’re right in the room with them experiencing their joy and despair. A fairy-tale brought to life, the story endears the reader to the child Faina, a mysterious little girl of the Alaskan woods whose elusiveness has an intriguing impact on all who come in contact with her. Ivey’s writing captures the beauty and wildness of that setting with the deft hand of one who seems to know it intimately.
I loved this book. It felt so vividly described and so very sad. I highly recommend unless you are dealing with unwanted childlessness. I wish I could find something else as magical, moving and impactful. I still think about it years after reading.
It is the best book I have ever read. It was one of three finalists for a Pulitzer Prize for best debut novel. From the very first page, one can put it down only with the greatest of difficulty. The characters seems like friends of mine, and, mainly for that reason, I have read it three times. The author, Eowyn Ivey, seems to always make the right decision re what is to come next in the action of this book. It contains love, romance, mystery, fantasy, an accurate picture of Alaska and life and homesteading therein, and much detailed information re description of what is in Alaska and things that happen therein, It is so much fun to read. The plot flows so very smoothly.
The Snow Child by Eowan Ivey
Published: 2012
I’m not sure exactly what words can describe this story. I can’t say that I immediately fell in love with the book. The story unfolded slowly and gradually drew me into the “web” of this “fairy tale”. It’s a delightfully engaging story of a couple, Jack and Mabel, who move in 1920 to “live off the land” building a home in a secluded part of Alaska.
They weren’t prepared for the lessons they would learn about themselves out in their isolated cabin. As the couple struggle to survive the cold, bitter winter, they discover they are not alone. Likewise, they learn that survival depends upon more than food and shelter when they befriend a family living nearby. Mabel often describes an old fairy tale within the book from her childhood which almost seems to parallel their own lives.
Still reveling in heartache from the children they could never have, Jack and Mabel build a “snow child” one night. Mystically, their “snow child” seems to appear as a young waif girl named Faina who lives in the woods with her fox companion. Just as the couple begin to love and care for her like their own child, they are forced to accept the reality of their dreams.
This novel is uniquely universal, in my opinion, as it shares many themes to which most people can relate. Feelings of hope and despair, fascination and joy, anger and forgiveness, loss and sorrow…..
Incredibly written. Each chapter is filled with beauty, if even in a chilling way.
A childless couple who set out on an adventure. An adventure that was supposed to be a new starting point. They chose the harsh world of Alaska and quickly came to terms with just how hard it is to tame a wilderness. All while grieving for children that never came and for a child that was not to be. Then through magic or divine intervention, a child appears. I will not say more because I do not want to give out spoilers. While beautifully written it was just hard to wrap my mind around this world.
The writing was beautiful, the characters were well developed, and the setting was breath-taking. This was a different genre for me, but I found that I enjoyed magical realism enough to venture into another book of this nature. The Alaskan frontier was so well described that as I read it I actually felt cold and slightly depressed with a sky that darkens early in the day. I felt that the novel ended the only way it could based on the plot’s progression. I felt that the author knew the flora and fauna of Alaska and proved it in her writing.
Amazing book. I’ve always loved historical fiction, and this one has a bit of mysticism intertwined with the story. Wonderfully tragic. Eowyn Ivy is one of my new favorite authors. I’m really excited for her new publications.
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey is a story about Jack and Mabel, an elderly couple who is childless living in the Alaskan wilderness.
This story was good, and the writing style was good. The characters were fairly written. What I didn’t care for was the lack of quotations during certain conversations. I know why the author chose this, but I feel these conversations would have benefited from the use of italics rather than the lack of quotations. Other than that, I felt this to be a good and emotional story.
This book made me believe in fairy tales coming true again.
What a great story! Set in 1920s Alaska. One part fairy tale, one part adventure story. It makes a wonderful book that stays with you!
For some reason, I thought this was a YA book before I started reading. I really cannot tell you where I got that idea from. Let me tell you, it’s not a YA book. There isn’t a bunch of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but it has concepts that would be over the heads of most younger YA readers and I don’t think it would keep the interest of that demographic. Of course, there’s always the acceptation to the rule, but this shouldn’t be read by anyone too young (in my opinion).
Now that I have that out of the way…this was an interesting book. Quite a bit different from most books I’ve read. And really, the nature of this story keeps me from getting too into detail about almost anything. This book is not a mystery, but it’s mysterious. There’s something afoot in the Alaskan wilderness that is quite curious. Is it real? Is it snow fever or some other such malady? For much of this story, the reader is drawn on to make come to their own conclusions about the nature of the snow child.
Taking out the element of Faina (the snow child), the story of the Jack and Mabel is by turns heartbreaking and uplifting. There is such a deep and enduring love between the couple. They moved to Alaska to start a new life. Not for the reasons most do such things, but because they have had problems conceiving and Mabel really wanted to go somewhere people didn’t already know them. Where their story wasn’t known by the whole town. First, so there would be no more talk about “poor childless Mabel”, but also so she wouldn’t have to be around so many children reminding her of what she has lost in her life. Mabel is quite a depressed character and Jack is left wondering how to help his wife. Especially now that it’s just the two of them in the middle of nowhere.
When Faina shows up, there are so many dynamics to explore. Faina and Mabel, Faina and Jack, and also the change in the relationship between Mabel and Jack that occurs. The way Mabel views Faina and reacts to her is so completely different from Jack’s reactions. It’s interesting to be able to watch it all play out.
Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, so I have to keep this brief and vague. I just want to say that at times this story sucked me in and kept me intrigued. Other times it fell by the wayside and didn’t quite call to me to pick it up. In the end, I cried. I turned to my husband and told him I didn’t know if I was crying from sadness or joy. But all in all this is a lovely story.
https://allingoodtimeblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/the-snow-child-book-club/
Surreal. Poignant. Fantastical yet so real. A beautiful, original first book by this author. Bought her second book just because she wrote it.
I really enjoyed this book. I wasn’t sure about it at first as I’m really not a fantasy book reader. It was so good and it’s not until the end of the book that you know the answer to what is alluded to throughout the story. Great characters and story line. I highly recommend this book