Monday, December 17, 2012

Book Review: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Title: The Snow Child
Author: Eowyn Ivey
Genre: Magical Realism
Subject: Fairy tale, family, grief
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
Release date: February 2012
Length: 389 pages
I got this book: Borrowed it from the library

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them."

Personal opinion:
I heard good things about this book and I love to read in the magical realism genre, so I picked it up. I am so glad I did because this is the perfect book to read now the days are growing colder. I loved how the magical elements are intertwined within a very realistic story of survival. The writer has spend a lot of time on the way the characters develop and each and every character brings something new and valuable to the story. I learned from Gnoe that even the names of the characters have meanings, and that brings a whole deeper layer to the story. The ending was bitter-sweet, but fitting. I would recommend this book to almost anyone, but especially if you are into fairy tale retellings and symbolism, you will probably enjoy this book as much as I did.


Purchase links: The Book Depository
Challenges: none
Other reviews: Rhapsody in Books,
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)


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