Book Review: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (A Beautiful Read)

The Snow Child is a retelling of the Russian fairy tale Snegurochka, or The Snow Maiden. It was Eowyn Ivey’s first novel and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and an international bestseller. Today, we present our honest book review of The Snow Child.

About The Book

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey - book review — *The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey*

Title: The Snow Child

Author: Eowyn Ivey

Genre: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism, Fairy Tales

Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books

Date of publication: February 1, 2012

Pages: 324

Goodreads rating: 4/5

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.

The Snow Child Book Review

This book is written in a sentimental manner. Ivey established the emotional state of and monochromatic life led by Mabel and Jack using rich wintery imagery. It gave me the feeling of the song evermore by Taylor Swift. I enjoy stories set against a winter backdrop—both happy and sad. But this novel certainly has a sad setting.

We sympathise greatly with Jack and Mabel. Also, I liked the narrative alternating perspectives between them. It showed us how they were both suffering in their own way, hardly having an open conversation with each other. It also shows how often life will seldom turn out as we anticipate.

Mabel looked up and saw his windburned hands and frayed cuffs, the crow’s feet that spread at the corners of his downturned eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she had touched that skin, and the thought ached like loneliness in her chest. Then she spotted a few strands of silver in his reddish-brown beard. When had they appeared? So he, too, was graying. Each of them fading away without the other’s notice.
Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

The world-building was beautiful, with vivid and earthly landscapes. The rich description of Alaska and its winters and wilderness is charming.

Ivey’s characterisation of her two protagonists was enchanting. Mabel is quiet, introverted, imaginative, and collected. She deduced very quickly that Faina was the snow child through a book she remembered reading as a child. Jack is calm, observant, honest with his work, and knows his faults. He was more understanding of Faina than Mabel was initially, as we can understand from Faina’s tendency to trust him first. I love how their approaches towards the girl were similar yet so different. Jack understood the girl quickly and earned her trust, while Mabel had a motherly affection for her. However, they both purely loved her and always did what was in her best interest.

I absolutely adored the maturity of the couple. They are wise and understanding beyond conversations and can sometimes also get playful. They might seem like they don’t have the connection they need in their relationship, which is very much true, but they do have the most crucial connection—love. This makes them more real and relatable as an elderly couple struggling in their lives but still looking out for each other.

“I am sorry, Mabel. I don’t know what else to do.” He flexed his hand, felt the tendons give and take, and wondered how he could again and again disappoint her.

“You think I blame you?” she said.

“Nobody else to. It’s on my shoulders.”

“How is it that you always arrive at that conclusion? That everything is your fault and yours alone? Wasn’t it my idea to come here? Didn’t I want this homestead, and all the hard work and failure that would come with it? If anything, I’m to blame, because I’ve done so little to help.”

Jack still looked at his hands.

“Don’t you see? This was to be ours together, the successes and the failures.”

The Bensons were the cherry on the cake. They added light-heartedness to the otherwise sad storyline of Jack and Mabel. They connected the couple to reality and friendship and were a great addition to the story.

Faina was very well written. She is this mysterious, shy, and lovable child. Whether Faina was indeed a human or a magical person was left to the conclusion of the readers. Additionally, Faina acts as a healthy catalyst for Jack and Mabel’s relationship. Her presence energises the couple, and she acts as their lucky charm. But most importantly, they learn to cope with child loss through her—something they struggled with their entire lives.

She wept until there was nothing left in her, and she wiped her face with the tips of her fingers and sat in the chair, expecting Jack to go out the door and leave her alone. But he knelt at her feet, put his head in her lap, and they held each other and shared the sorrow of an old man and an old woman who have lost their only child.

Concluding, I found myself slacking off at times, mostly because I’m more into fast-paced books. However, I enjoyed reading it primarily because of the engaging characters, their emotions, and the snowy backdrop. All in all, this book is bittersweet, wistful, and thought-provoking and provides a heartfelt read.

Conclusion

Rating: 4/5

Recommendation: I recommend this to anyone who is into literary fiction, folktales, and emotional stories with a hint of magic.

To buy The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey now:

About the Author

Ivey was a newspaper reporter at the Frontiersman in Wasilla for a decade before quitting her job to work as a bookseller in order to focus on writing novels. Ivey’s first novel, The Snow Child, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and an international bestseller. Her newest novel, To the Bright Edge of the World, was released on August 2, 2016. She has also written essays which have appeared in various publications. Eowyn was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters.

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