Review: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
My rating: 4 of 5 teacups
I put off reading The Snow Child because it wasn't something I would have chose for myself without the extremely positive reviews of other goodreads members. If it is not obvious to you from the description alone, then this book is not mostly plot-driven. It's charm is upheld by the characters, the relationships, and the sad, cold mood that seems to permeate the entire novel from open to close. It is the kind of novel that I sometimes have trouble with, the kind not concerned with action or drama, but more subdued and subtle. However, I was fortunate in that the characters held my attention throughout and the relationship between Mabel and Jack carried something simultaneously heart-warming and bittersweet that really spoke to me.
Mabel and Jack are an aging couple that have escaped from their previous reality into the Alaskan wilderness. They struggle to get by with Jack trying desperately to turn the old farm where they live into something that can support them through the harsh winters. But they are also struggling with something that runs much deeper: their childlessness and the memory of the stillborn baby that continues to drive them apart. I loved the relationship between the pair, the way they often felt distanced from one another but still relied on each other for support. It was heart-breaking to picture them sat at their table feeling the absence of a child and unable to discuss it.
There's something about this novel that is just plain sad. Even when nothing particularly sad seems to be happening. It's a tone that the story never shakes and perhaps it is something to do with the description of the freezing and isolated environment that made me feel like I should prepare to burst into tears at any second. I can't say for sure whether this book was supposed to be a lesson in how you cannot run away from your problems, or how bottling things up and shutting people out never works, but I can say that I took a little bit of all of this from the story.
Onto the snow child herself. It could have been an intentional move on the author's part, but I felt constantly distanced from her character; I felt perhaps she was a tool by which the main players' (Mabel and Jack) could be analysed and allowed to grow and develop. This is not so much a criticism as an observation. If you aren't aware of the basic plot outline, Mabel and Jack create a child out of the snow on a winter's night and discover the creation gone the next morning with a single trail of footsteps leading away from where it had stood. Then suddenly they start to spot a young girl roaming the woods, one who is identical to their snow sculpture and they see it as an opportunity to maybe finally have the child they always wanted.
I had been all set to give this book five stars, I really had. The writing is beautiful, the characters interesting, and the relationships touching... but the ending was disappointing. For me, it seemed like an unsatisfactory "is that it, then?" kind of ending that left me expecting some kind of twist from the epilogue that wasn't forthcoming. It wasn't enough to make me change my mind about the rest of the story and I would still highly recommend this book, but it was quite a large fault in an otherwise near-perfect novel.
Posted on May 17 2012
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