Review: The Snow Child

Title: The Snow Child

Author: Eowyn Ivey

Publisher: Headline Review (UK)

Alone in their homestead on the Alaskan frontier, Mabel mends shirts and mourns for the child she lost long ago, whilst Jack struggles to carve out a new life for them before the harsh winter snows come. It was supposed to be a fresh start, but out here, alone but for the sounds of the wild, lost dreams loom all the more.

The tale of the Russian snow child is just a story - or is it? When the snowgirl Jack and Mabel have built is destroyed and an elusive child appears in its place, who is to know if she is flesh and blood, or an imagining brought on by grief and loneliness? And if she will be theirs, does it matter?


I really loved this book. It's not a novel to race through; you want to take it slowly, feeling the lyricism of the language and letting the story soak into you bit by bit. I could have read for weeks, if I hadn't been so keen to know how it would end!

The small cast of characters are deftly portrayed, each with their own distinct characters and motivations in their struggle against the harsh landscape they inhabit. There's a real feel for the land as well - Eowyn Ivey is a native Alaskan, and her love of her country comes shining through every evocative little bit of description. I feel like I felt everything, rather than just skimming through to see how it ended. The story takes place over a period of several years, but never seems to drag, and nothing ever seems unnecessary.

The writing is as beautiful as you'd hope, with some clever touches - I particularly like the way that unlike all other characters, conversations with Faina, the snow child herself, operate outside quotation marks, so you can never be entirely sure if you can consider them to have occurred or not. It's a theme that continues throughout the entire novel - we tilt first one way and then the other, as proof of Faina's reality is offered, only to be countered in the next chapter with the suggestion of something other at work. It's a great balancing trick, never straying too far to one side or the other. All that is required of the reader is the suspension of disbelief - it doesn't really matter if Faina is magical or not, as long as you're willing to consider the possibility. Even now, I just don't know! But I love not knowing, that feeling of infinite potential.

The essential conflict is the battle between the physical and the magical; the cold, harsh reality of the life of an Alaskan homesteader vs the beauty of its landscape; the masculine, if you will, vs the feminine. The Snow Child is a fable, really; a tale about the magic of belief itself. Or, if you want to get lit-student about it, a tale about man's attempt to bound the female spirit down to earth. I think I prefer the first interpretation.