The Snow Child - reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

It’s early in theyear to be picking favourites but I suspect Alaskan writer Eowyn Ivey’s debutnovel The Snow Child (Headline,$34.99) will be one of my best reads of 2012. This is a magical and delicatelywritten story based on a Russian folk tale in which a childless couple sculpt adaughter out of snow. It’s one of those books that transports you to the placeit’s set, with descriptions so vivid I could almost feel the bone-aching coldeven 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 theAlaskan wilderness in a bid to escape the grief of their childlessness. As thestory begins it is almost winter and Mabel is dreading the struggle of thedark, frozen months ahead. The wilderness is beautiful but “it was a beautythat 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 forcompany.

Then the firstsnow falls and in a rare playful moment the couple make a snow girl, decoratingit with mittens and a scarf. When they wake to find the snow girl gone and achildish figure in a blue scarf running through the trees, neither is surewhether to believe their eyes. For how could anyone survive out in that frozen,savage landscape?

The child returnsagain and again. She is wild and beautiful, covered in frost and crystals ofice and hunts for wild game in the company of a red fox. She moves fast anddances over the snow. But is she real? Both the child and the story itself havean ethereal quality and Ivey creates a lingering doubt that the couple areimagining the girl.

Gradually the snowchild 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 andeach winter when the snows come so does Faina then when spring arrives, shedisappears.

Remembering thefairy-tale about the snow maiden, Mabel is haunted by a dread of losing the elusivechild; fearing Faina might die or fail to return one winter.

It’s a riskybusiness blending fairytale with reality but Ivey’s writing is sensitive enoughto make it work. The whole of this desolate and fantastical story is chilled bya sense of unease and a feeling sorrow may only be moments away. It has emotionaldepth and the hardships of the pioneering life to balance out its feyness. Andwhile the phantom girl flits in and out of the story, the character of Mabel iswhat holds it steady: she is dignified and sad, struggling mentally andphysically, filled with love and longing.

The Snow Child is a tender and powerful novel, wonderfully atmosphericand beautifully crafted, a joy to read from start to finish. I almost feelsorry for Eowyn Ivey for such a dream of a debut is going to be a nightmare tofollow!

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