PattyMacDotComma's Reviews > The Snow Child

5★
“It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed, if you lived at all.
. . .

Jack had always scoffed at the superstitious and mystical. Alone in the depths of the wilderness, however, in the fading winter light, he had discovered in himself an animal-like fear.”

A debut, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and a wonderful story I’m happy to add to my list of favourites. I used to read myths and fairy tales, so I’m a perfect audience for this lovely interpretation of an old Russian folktale.

It's 1920, Wolverine River, Alaska. Jack and Mabel have made a daring move from the comfortable East Coast of the United States. Mabel was a well-educated, sheltered girl, but when she and Jack lost their baby and have had none since, she urged him to make the change. They needed to start anew, by themselves, for themselves. Or so she told people.

“. . . she wondered if she had told the truth. Was that why they had come north – to build a life? Or did fear drive her? Fear of the gray, not just in the strands of her hair and her wilting cheeks, but the gray that ran deeper, to the bone, so that she thought she might turn into a fine dust and simply sift away in the wind.”

Eventually the isolation, Jack’s troubles trying to farm, and their dwindling finances finally grind Mabel down, not to a fine dust, but to a state of despair.

She’s ready to call it quits, but then one day, they meet a neighbour family of lively boys and colourful parents, and they are sucked into their warm circle. Esther is a strong, loveable woman in overalls with a never-say-die attitude. Just what Mabel needs.

“Esther burst into the cabin like a friendly hen, flapping and chattering and nearly knocking Mabel over as she tried to open the door for her. In one hand she held a towel-covered cast-iron pot and with the other she hugged Mabel and kissed her on the cheek.”

When the snow begins to fall softly one night, Mabel remembers playing in it as a girl.

Before we know it, she and Jack are outside, throwing snowballs and building a snowman. No, a snow girl. With red mittens and scarf, a pretty face carved by Jack, and lips reddened by a berry. Yellow grass hair is the last touch.

The next morning, the snow has melted and Jack glimpses a figure with yellow hair and a red scarf, dashing through the trees.

When Mabel remembers the Russian folktale her father used to read them about a childless old couple who made a snow child that came to life, she writes to her sister to ask for the old book.

As Jack finally tracks her and coaxes her to come closer to the cabin, we see Faina is like a lovely wild animal. Shy of them but fierce and capable of looking after herself in ways they can’t.

“The child brought the smell of snow in with her, and the air in the cabin cooled and brightened.”

As they begin to interact, Mabel keeps re-reading the story and her sister’s letter with more details of the folktale. She becomes frightened, understanding that such a child may not survive.

“Another child gone from their lives. It was a possibility she could not bear. She wound herself tightly, as if within her girdled ribs she could contain all possibilities, all futures and all deaths. Perhaps if she held herself just right. Maybe if she knew what would be or could be. Or if she wished with enough heart. If only she could believe.”

Haven’t we all done that? Prayed, crossed fingers, collected lucky charms, “wound ourselves tightly”?

Ivey has written a magical story, and it even includes a possible explanation for Faina’s presence. But we don’t really buy that, do we? We like the fairy tale. And this is a magical place.

“Illumination behind the peaks shot up into shards of light, blue-green like a dying fire, rippled and twisted, then spun circles into ribbons of purple that stretched up and over Mabel’s head until she heard an electric crackle like the sparks from a wool blanket in a dry cabin at night. She looked directly up into the northern lights and she wondered if those cold-burning specters might not draw her breath, her very soul, out of her chest and into the stars.”