Review on The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

It’s already April and personally, I haven’t had enough of Winter to let it get away.

I mean, the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom in Washington D.C., which means I’m pretty much going to have to live with the fact that Spring is coming… Whether I like it or not. It’s not that I don’t like Spring, I just wish I could have seen more snow this year. Field covered with fresh snow that it hurts to look at it directly kind of snow, half your leg is stuck in snow that you can’t move kind of snow, making a snow man and his family kind of snow, and of course, streets are too slippery you can’t go to work/school kind of snow. =D

So, I tried to compensate the loss I felt with a good book that reminded me of Winter.

“The Snow Child” by Eowyn Ivey

“5 STARTS!”

Let me just start off by saying that it is a great book. But if you are the kind of person who gets crazy with ambiguous endings, you might not like this book at all.

The story is based on a Russian fairy tale, an elderly couple who cannot have children of their own builds a child out of snow, the next day the child comes to life and soon she becomes their center of everything. They say the fairy tale has many different endings and the author has chosen to leave us with a conclusion of our own.

The background of it all is not that different, two couple who has already suffered from a loss of a child decides to move to Alaska, away from family and friends. At first they are distant, indifferent to each other. But when the first snow came, it was like a new beginning. They make a child out of snow, a girl. Now, you don’t have to be a detective to know that this girl they made out of snow, becomes a child in flesh and blood the next day.

The book is divided into three sections.

First, it’s all about the dynamics of the couple, how they came to be. The narrative also goes back and forth from wife to husband which makes readers understand a whole lot better of what’s going on both of their minds.

Second, they both have very different sentiment for the girl. Wife, who thinks that she is a “snow maiden,” from a book her father read to her when she was a little girl and grateful for the fact that she has something to love again. Husband, who has seen the other side of this girl and thinks of her as nothing but a lost child and mourns for her. It portrayed two sides almost perfectly and when they finally shared with each other of what they knew of the child, the collision was so real yet troublesome.

Third, a new narrative is introduced, which I thought it was the weirdest part of the book. The Snow Child, at this point, gave me wonder as to if she was a real person? or a snow maiden? And it worried me to think that there won’t be a perfect ending for this story after all. Also it was by this point that I thought I would be okay either way.

The story is written so poetically at times that I kept reading the same sentence over and over again. It draws you in deeply and forcefully like the white snow in the mountains and makes you feel like you are the only person in the world when you are reading it. I teared up many times during the story, felt the heart squeeze itself from time to time. I recommend this book for all those who already misses the Winter and an adult fairy tale.

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(a passage or two from the book)

All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light.

I remember with some shame that the rest of us teased you about seeing such spirits, but now my own grandchildren chase similar fancies and I do not discourage them. In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believe as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.

She had thought often of Ada’s words about inventing new endings to stories and choosing joy over sorrow. In recent years she had decided her sister had been in part wrong. Suffering and death and loss were inescapable. And yet, what Ada had written about joy was entirely true. When she stands before you with her long, naked limbs and her mysterious smile, you must embrace her while you can.