Review: The Snow Child

Title: The Snow Child

Author: Eowyn Ivey

Pages: 388

Genre:  Fantasy (Magical realism/ modern fairytale adaptation)

Audience:  Adult

Source: Library (Becky)

Rating: 5-I'd move to Alaska for this book

Goodreads Summary:

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.

Our Thoughts

Becky in black.Mabel and Faina were my favorites because we see most into Mabel's thoughts and feelings, and Faina is such a mystery but the easiest to picture.  Her backstory is so chilling and unresolved.  I also loved Jack. He seemed like such a "man's man" but in an honest and unpretentious way.  Garrett...meh lol. The supporting characters were rarely seen but were well drawn despite it.  

  The overall effect of this was that it kind of made me want to move somewhere far away from civilization, and then I remembered I have no survival skills lol.   Most of all I loved the hint of magic that laces the creeping, melancholy atmosphere. The language was simple yet artful, and I only noticed in the last fifty pages that there were no quotation marks. 

A final aspect I loved was the survival story in harsh elements and the way the characters become self sustaining.  As a child I was obsessed with stories like Hatchet and Little House in the Big Woods.  This story has a lot of trapping and hard farming that holds its own kind of magic for a city kid like me.  Overall it was a really great read, especially for winter.  I need to own it, lol.