the SNOW CHILD

Eowyn Ivey writes an intriguing novel full of symbolism born out of a old Russian fairy tale. Even Eowyn Ivey's first name (pronounced: A-o-win) conjures up a sort of mysterious glow on her somewhat mystic first novel. Actually, her first name is based on a character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I found this novel haunting and thought-provoking, especially after I finished the novel. I asked myself: Who was the snow child? Was she real? Does she symbolize the Alaskan wilderness or the struggle between life and death? This is the kind of symbolism that classrooms could analyze and debate forever. Dan Brown’s fictional character Robert Langdon would have quite a task explaining the hidden meanings of this novel to this reviewer. Wait a minute, maybe Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot can figure out this befuddling conclusion for me. Whatever, this novel is quite a trip!

The book’s setting is Alaska. The year is 1929. Jack and Mabel have moved to Alaska to start a new life after Mabel delivered a stillborn child. They are struggling to make a go of farming in the wilderness of Alaska. Mabel is depressed and even contemplates suicide. Then, they experience their first Alaskan snowfall and joyfully build a snow child that they dress in a blue coat, mittens, yellow grass hair, and a scarf. The next day, they discover the snow child knocked down with tracks leading to the woods, but no tracks from the woods to the destroyed snow child. Jack sees a girl wearing the snow child's attire peeking at him behind the trees in the forest. She has a red fox with her. What is going on? The neighbors, George and Esther, tell them there are no young blond girls in the valley. Esther tells Mabel “...The winters are long, and sometimes it starts to get to you. Around here, they call it cabin fever. You get down in the dumps, everything’s off kilter and sometimes your mind starts playing tricks on you.” But, Jack and Mabel know what they saw. After a period of time the girl cautiously comes to the cabin to visit them. The snow child says her name is Faina. Faina never sleeps over and always leaves for the forest after her visit, no matter how bad or cold the weather is outside. Where does she go, and how come no one else sees the girl? One day Jack tracks the girl and finds her in the mountains by a hidden abode. Apparently her father died of alcohol abuse, and Jack buries the man. Mystery solved? Not really. Why does the girl prefer to live alone in the wilderness? How come she disappears in the spring and summer and comes back in the winter?

Now that the author has wet your whistle, the book takes some unforeseen twists. The neighbor’s son, Garrett, sees the girl! He witnesses Faina killing a snared swan. Garrett is smitten and confused. That Christmas the neighbors surprise Jack and Mabel at their cabin, and finally see the snow child. What happens next? Well, you will find out after reading part two and three of this avant-garde first time novel by Eowyn Ivey. I thought Ivey’s characterization was well done, and her description of Alaskan scenery and wildlife was outstanding. Since Ivey lives in Alaska and works as a bookseller at an independent bookstore, her descriptive credentials of Alaska are a given. She states that she was almost finished with her first novel when she got the idea for this story. This leads me to believe that we will see more of her work soon. What happened to that other book? This was a enjoyable read.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I wonder if Eowyn Ivey is part of a new genre of novels. dogeardiscs.wordpress.com says: “There’s a wonderful ongoing trend among adult novels and that is to evoke childhood and imagination by creating stories that recreate the sense of a fairytale. The Night Circus achieved this last year by creating a hypnotic and dreamlike world for readers to explore and live within. We aren’t even a week into 2012 and I have been utterly gobsmacked by what I can only call an adult fairytale of longing and love.” It’s hard to say where this trend is going, but lately I find myself reading books of unknown genres.

What does Eowyn Ivey think about this folktale genre? Well, in an interview with booksellernz, Eowyn says, ”I think subconsciously I had always been looking for a way to tell a magical story set in Alaska. This place is my inspiration as a writer, and as a reader my entire life I rarely came across books that took place in a northern landscape. The Snegurochka fairy tale was a kind of lightning bolt for me – suddenly I could see the path into the story I wanted to tell.” And, they asked Eowyn about some of the missing quotation marks, and she said...” Thank you — I’m so glad you noticed the quote marks. Some readers have wondered if they are the result of typographical errors, but it was intentional. When I first began writing Faina’s dialogue, it felt as if I had somehow dragged her to the ground and stripped away some of her magic. I am a fan of Cormac McCarthy, and I tried removing all the quote marks throughout the manuscript. But that didn’t feel right either. So as an experiment I decided to not use quote marks any time Faina is part of a conversation – I hoped it would allow her to remain slightly otherworldly, slightly removed from the everyday.” Once again Cormac’s "no rules" prose comes into play.

Finally, what is it like for real-life Alaskan settlers? “Because of its extremes Alaska is a challenging place to live, but it seems to take hold of some people. Jack London is a wonderful example – he was beaten down by his travels to the Klondike during the Gold Rush, and yet he spent the rest of his life writing about the north and its hardships. Throughout Alaska’s history, some people who have moved here can’t wait to flee. But for some, it is like Esther says to Mabel: 'I don’t know if you ever get used to it really. It just gets in your blood so that you can’t stand to be anywhere else.'”