The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

In three words:

Magical, spellbinding, beautiful

 

 

What I thought:

This book is truly magical. It hooked me from page one and did not let me go until I closed the final pages, and it was with a heavy heart that I said goodbye to this wonderful place and its small cast of characters.

Jack and Mabel arrive in Alaska in 1920 to make a new home for themselves and to get away from the terrible heartache of losing their only child at birth ten years before. Their sense of loss and grief is palpable and their sadness at realising that they are also losing each other is felt clearly through those opening pages. Just as things seem to be coming to a head, Jack and Mabel – in a rare moment of companionship – build a snowgirl together when the first snows of that winter arrive at their homestead. They dress it in mittens and a scarf and use the juice of berries to give some colour to its lips. The next morning, not only is their snowgirl gone, but there are little footprints leading away from the mound of snow and the couple start to be convinced that they have seen a little girl in a blue coat dashing between the trees in the snow, followed by a red fox.

What follows is a truly captivating and spell-binding tale of a little girl, who we come to find out is called Faina, and her place in the rebuilding of the lives of Jack and Mabel. As the elderly couple open their hearts once again, Mabel remembers a book that her father used to read to her when she was a child: a snow child that appears at the house of a childless couple and, despite many re-tellings and different endings over the years, always ends with the little girl melting back into the snow, and Mabel comes to dread the day that Faina will leave them too.  Faina herself is not quite tamable and always slightly out of reach of the couple and it is through her that the reader is treated to such a feast of beauty and nature and landscape. Just wondferful.

Istill can’t quite believe that this is a debut novel and beacuse of this, I cannot wait to see what else she comes up with in the future. The Snow Child isn’t released until 12th February 2012 but I just had to review it right now and yell that you MUST, MUST, MUST get yourself a copy of this book when it is out – run to the shops!  

Verdict: Wow, just wow. My favourite book of 2011 and I am head over heels in love with it.

 

(Source: I received a review copy of this book from Amazon Vine)