Book Review #10 - The Snow Child

So many things to love about the enchanting novel, The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey.  Set in Alaska homesteading period of the 1920s, Jack and Mabel seem a poor fit for survival in the extreme conditions that surround them.  Already approaching their twilight years, Jack lacks the strength to establish a producing farm on his own and Mabel struggles with loneliness and depression from a past miscarriage and subsequent infertility.  Then, on a night when the winter snow begins to fall, Jack and Mabel have their first lighthearted moment in a long time thanks to their welcoming neighbors, Esther and George, and upon returning home, spontaneously play in the snow and build a showgirl.  Mabel decorates it with a coat and mittens and Jack carves a beautiful lifelike face onto the snow statue.  During the night, Jack wakes and sees their snow girl destroyed and what he thinks is a real girl wearing the coat and mittens they used to decorate their snowy creation earlier frolicking about his yard.  The mystery of who the girl is, if she’s real or a creation of grief and cabin fever fills out the rest of the story.

What’s fun about this book is the fable within a fable.  The Snow Child introduces an unknown-to-me Russian story, Snegurochka or The Snow Maiden, and it is used as both foreshadowing and as a parallel with Mabel and Jack’s snow girl.  The author is very adept at subtly shifting between their harsh reality of needing food and warmth and human contact and the enigmatic existence of Faina, the snow child.  For instance, whenever Jack and Mabel are talking to or about Faina, Ivey leaves out traditional punctuation.  No quotation marks or commas.  The words seem more like thoughts than anything spoken aloud.  The other conversations throughout the book are framed with quotation marks so it is deliberate and effective.  Are those conversations real?

I also appreciated the author’s ability to convey depth of emotion - both lighthearted joy and gut wrenching despair.  I felt proud of Mabel when she successfully planted potatoes and mad at Jack when he didn’t comfort his lonely wife.  Likewise, I cheered when Jack got a bull moose and wanted to shush Mabel when she pestered Jack.  So much truth about marriage here - both the committed and romantic love but also the disappointment and grudges that are hard to let go.  I also loved how the author showcased the need and purpose of friends and human interaction.  We need it more than we think we do.  It lifts our souls to connect with others.

The part of the book that failed for me was the snow child herself.  I never connected to her.  I think we were supposed to, much like Jack and Mabel did, but her aloofness and ambiguity prevented her from being anything more than a “thing” in their life, and I never felt concern for her outcome.  This confuses me because the way the book ends, I assume we are supposed to care very much.

Which brings me to the ending.  I don’t think I got it.  I read a library’s copy and have since returned it but I wish I could reread the last chapter or two because I think what I thought happened may never have happened at all.  Perhaps that is the point, this being a near fable and all, but I’m pretty sure I should be more sure.

All things considered, it is a lovely book.  One I happily recommend.