Getting a Read: The Snow Child
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
It’s my firm belief that when a person recommends a book to me, they’re handing me an inside look at their soul. In this series, “Getting a Read,” I try to uncover truth about books and their recommenders.
THE RECOMMENDER: JULIA ROWE
Julia and I bonded this last year over heartbreak and life’s many difficulties. She’s a school counselor, sometimes poet, and lover of all things anime. I look to her alternately for fun and consolation, depending on the day. She exceeds at pointing the way toward both.
HOW TO READ IT
If you love gloom and books that tug on your heartstrings, save this book for a long, dark, winter’s night, so you can revel in it. If you’re like me, you’ll read it outside on a warm spring day—this will keep you from imagining you, too, are conjuring spirits out of a semi-dead landscape.
REVIEW: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
This book had me feeling things right from the start. In fact, the lonely, desperate opening which details the suicide attempt of a childless wife in the cold Alaskan late fall made me slam the book shut on page 6. I thought seriously about asking Julia for a new recommendation and wondered whether I could emotionally handle this book.
Julia, my counselor friend and recommender, assured me it was NOT in the least depressing. And though I thoroughly disagree with her on the other side of this book, I think the truth is, we’re both right.
The husband and wife in this book spend the first snowy night of the winter building a snow child together. This scene represents a moment of happiness for them both and mirrors a Russian fairy tale (read The Snow-Child translated here), a theme which comes back again and again throughout the novel. The next morning, just like in the Russian fairy tale, a girl appears and enters their life. I’ll keep this review spoiler-free and hold my tongue on whether or not this girl is actually made of snow.
Set in the 1920’s, the land is far harsher than it is today. The folding over of the seasons brings real uncertainty to the characters. Will the crops survive the summer rains? Will Faina, the Snow Child, return with the winter? And in the winter, what is real when you’ve been in the dark with no outside contact for days? Is the snow child simply a figment of a half-starved imagination?
The author paints glorious textual pictures of the forest, the cabin, and the wildlife. The characters, specifically Mabel, the wife from the opening, wonder over the landscape. She draws pictures of every small thing that pops off the blankness of the snow—and sometimes she draws the snow too.
The twin themes of this book, to my mind, are longing and wonder. Each of these are again twinned. Within the characters, there exists simultaneously a longing for and fearful awe of both life and death, perhaps a mimickry of the Alaskan landscape surrounding them.
Structurally, this book leaves some to be desired; quite simply, it’s too long. The author loses track of her best work by filling out the landscape too much, by saying more than needs to be said about the fairy tale. And, in the end, I believe we see too much of the story, too far ahead in the lives of the characters. This text could’ve ended much sooner for a far different, and to my mind, far better conclusion. Amanda Holmes Duffy has more on this thought.
More than the overextended plot, the element I took the most issue with was the dialogue structure. Whenever Faina, the Snow Child, enters a scene, the author chooses to drop quotations and put all dialogue in italics. This is a rather blatant hint that Faina is supposed to be unreliable. Is she or isn’t she real? But, by the end of the text I felt these italics were more of an indication of the author’s lack of confidence in her own work than anything else. I was surprised to learn this book was nominated for a Pullitzer—I honestly don’t get how that happened, but who am I to judge?
But still, I fell into this text and enjoyed my moments with it. Time passes rather abruptly in this book. Truths are realized after the fact. It’s too late, or nearly so, this book seems to always say. Hold onto what precious little you can treasure now, before time and memory fade away.
This book will not depress you if you see the hope that might come along with this call to action. Living in the present is a gift, after all. If you’re one to see the gloom of a rapidly passing future, this book may provoke a good cry session. This is why I think we’re both right, Julia and I. We see the darkness and the beauty of this story and both call it good.
THE RECOMMENDER IN REVIEW
I see a reflection of Julia’s steadfastness in this text. She, like Mabel, would stick out the commitment she’d made to the Alaskan landscape. She, along with Mabel, would both hope and fear that the magic she sensed around her was real.
WHERE TO FIND IT
Pick up The Snow Child wherever books are sold. It should also be easy to find at your local library. Shout out, this week, to The Wild Detectives in the Bishop Arts District. This feels like a book they’d love to order for you.
