Author: Eowyn Ivey
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
Pages: 389
Format: Paperback
Source: Personal purchase
Description:
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 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.
My thoughts:
You know how there are books that you
randomly pick up at the bookstore, make them wait on your shelf for quite a
while, and when you finally do read them, you get mad at yourself for having
waited that long? Alaskan Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child was one of those books
for me. I feel I’ve already read this year’s surprise, and in January of all
months.
The Snow Child takes place in
Alaska, in the 1920s. Jack and Mabel are an old couple (although their exact
ages aren’t given, I’m guessing they’re somewhere between 50 and 60) without a
kid. Mabel had a miscarriage back in the day, and the couple just couldn’t get
over it because they want children so badly. They move to Alaska to start a new
home, a new life together. However, I got the feeling they didn’t fully take
into account what a menace Alaskan weather can be.
One day, a little girl shows up on
their land out of nowhere. In the beginning, she doesn’t really get close to
them, but then she becomes part of family. She mostly refuses to stay with them
at their house, and she can very well take care of herself despite the bad
weather conditions. The girl, Faina, is the child that Jack and Mabel have
always wanted but couldn’t have. Faina doesn’t show up for anyone other than
the couple for a while, but then she wins the hearts of the couple’s friends as
well, especially the young boy Garrett.
We can’t tell for sure if Faina is
real or if she’s a product of the characters’ imagination. For example, the
author doesn’t use quotation marks in any of the characters’ speeches whenever
Faina is around, which I thought was a very clever touch. Therefore, we can’t
tell whether they’re really talking to the girl or if it’s in their
imagination.
The book includes the short story “Little
Daughter of the Snow by Arthur Ransome, which inspired Ivey to write The Snow
Child. My favorite part about the book was that even though the people look
like its main characters, the actual one is Alaska itself with its climate and
wonderful landscape. The Snow Child is definitely a good example of magical
realism, and I recommend it to everyone who love a bit of magic mixed in with
their reality.
I should also mention that this book was among the 3 Pulitzer finalists in 2013.
