It’s early in the
year to be picking favourites but I suspect Alaskan writer Eowyn Ivey’s debut
novel The Snow Child (Headline,
$34.99) will be one of my best reads of 2012. This is a magical and delicately
written story based on a Russian folk tale in which a childless couple sculpt a
daughter out of snow. It’s one of those books that transports you to the place
it’s set, with descriptions so vivid I could almost feel the bone-aching cold
even though I was reading it in the middle of summer.
Set in the 1920s,
it tells of a middle-aged couple, Jack and Mabel, who have moved to farm the
Alaskan wilderness in a bid to escape the grief of their childlessness. As the
story begins it is almost winter and Mabel is dreading the struggle of the
dark, frozen months ahead. The wilderness is beautiful but “it was a beauty
that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed,
if you lived at all.” This is a harsh place to survive and Mabel has a lonely,
silent life with little money to spare and mostly only her taciturn husband for
company.
Then the first
snow falls and in a rare playful moment the couple make a snow girl, decorating
it with mittens and a scarf. When they wake to find the snow girl gone and a
childish figure in a blue scarf running through the trees, neither is sure
whether to believe their eyes. For how could anyone survive out in that frozen,
savage landscape?
The child returns
again and again. She is wild and beautiful, covered in frost and crystals of
ice and hunts for wild game in the company of a red fox. She moves fast and
dances over the snow. But is she real? Both the child and the story itself have
an ethereal quality and Ivey creates a lingering doubt that the couple are
imagining the girl.
Gradually the snow
child comes closer and they learn her name, Faina, and something of her story.
She resists all attempts to tame her but tentatively accepts their love and
each winter when the snows come so does Faina then when spring arrives, she
disappears.
Remembering the
fairy-tale about the snow maiden, Mabel is haunted by a dread of losing the elusive
child; fearing Faina might die or fail to return one winter.
It’s a risky
business blending fairytale with reality but Ivey’s writing is sensitive enough
to make it work. The whole of this desolate and fantastical story is chilled by
a sense of unease and a feeling sorrow may only be moments away. It has emotional
depth and the hardships of the pioneering life to balance out its feyness. And
while the phantom girl flits in and out of the story, the character of Mabel is
what holds it steady: she is dignified and sad, struggling mentally and
physically, filled with love and longing.
The Snow Child is a tender and powerful novel, wonderfully atmospheric
and beautifully crafted, a joy to read from start to finish. I almost feel
sorry for Eowyn Ivey for such a dream of a debut is going to be a nightmare to
follow!
Nicky Pellegrino, (right NZH photo), a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 19 February, 2012
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