Tabetha's Reviews > The Snow Child

"'There,' he said. He stepped back. Sculpted in the white snow were perfect, lovely eyes, a nose, and small, white lips. She even thought she could see cheekbones and a little chin...How could she speak her surprise? Such delicate features. formed by his calloused hands, a glimpse at his longing. Surely, he too, had wanted children...they believed that someday their Christmas mornings would reel with running children and squeals of delight. She sewed a small stocking of their firstborn and he sketched plans for a rocking horse he would build. Maybe the first would be a girl, or would be a boy? How could they have known that twenty years later they would still be childless, just an old man and an old woman alone in the wildnerness?"

A fairytale retelling of the Russian fairytale, "Snegurochka" ("The Snow Maiden"), this quietly intense book captured my heart from the very beginning, and would not let go. Jack and Mabel live in 1920 in the harsh reality that is the wilderness of Alpine, Alaska, with its unbearable summer heat, then all too quickly, with its freezing bitter winter cold, snow and ice, the lack of visibility, the isolation and loneliness. Most of all, they face the fear of not being able to survive the brutal winter, they watch and wait each year for the first signs of spring. They are childless, and not by choice. Jack and Mabel hold their grief close, weighted down, buried deep within their hearts. But one night, they let go of their grief and create a beautiful child out of snow...and in that moment, their lives will change forever, hope and light will replace despair and depression.

Eowyn Ivey writes so vividly that I felt I was in the middle of the snow and then a full blown snow storm, and during the summer scenes, I felt the heat of the hot sun, the mosquitoes swarming. This story is such a beautiful example of magical realism, the fantastical, the imagined, combined and layered into the every day real life. And such a life that this couple experienced in the Alaskan wilderness where nothing is taken for granted, where preparing for the upcoming winter is paramount all spring and all summer. I recommend this story to anyone that values the beauty and selflessness of true friendship, who has ever dealt with love and loss in their life, or to those who are parents, as this book speaks to the nature of giving, caring, nurturing, but eventually, having to let go...

And then, the wonder of the miraculous snow child appears out of nowhere...
"The girl appeared and disappeared without warning and it unnerved Jack. There was something otherworldly in her manners and appearance, her frosty lashes and cool blue stare, the way she materialized out of the forest. In ways she was clearly just a little girl, with her small frame and rare, stifled giggles, but in others she seemed composed and wise, as if she moved through the world with knowledge beyond anything Jack had encountered."