Wow. I don't have much to say except that I really enjoyed this book from beginning to end. I have never read a book by Eowyn Ivey before and will definitely seek out more works. This book really made me want to crawl out into the woods under a starry sky in the middle of winter and just take a deep breath and let it just roll over me. I thought the character development of Jack and Mabel really worked. Also loved how Ivey dealt with the character of Faina as well. We also get another point of view eventually with a boy that Jack and Mabel watch grow up and start to see as a son. I thought the setting really worked and the ending was definitely bittersweet. 

"The Snow Child" centers around a middle-aged couple named Jack and Mable. Ten years earlier they lost a baby and almost lost each other. They eventually moved from Pennsylvania to Alaska. The story takes place in the 1920s and you have Ivey showcasing an Alaska that is wild and also harsh. After making a snow child in the woods one night outside their cabin, Jack and then Mable see a young girl in the woods. And Mabel wonders if they made this child that seems to thrive in snow and cold. The book shows Mabel and Jack both dealing with loving and worrying over this young girl who they eventually find out is named Faina. And we follow them through the years as she grows up and they grow up along with their neighbors who they start to see as family as well. 

Mabel and Jack have your hearts right away. You wonder what could have a couple this old out in the Alaskan wilderness, but you find out. They are on the verge of losing each other until Jack meets the Benson family who end up bringing a spark back to them and their marriage. When they eventually come across Faina you have them both thinking of the child they have lost and getting another one in a strange way. Ivey leads you to find out the beginnings of Faina, but you are constantly wondering if she is a child/young woman or something else. 

I thought that Ivey played very nicely with the magical realism aspects of this book. Things are subtle here and there and sometimes more overt. I liked it and thought that it fit the mood of the book very well. The flow of the book worked and we end up getting three parts to this book with Jack and Mabel first meeting Faina then 6 years passing, and then eventually years after that as well. 

The setting of Alaska during the winter months made me long for hot chocolate and fire. However, you get to see the beauty in the snow and the air and everything that comes alive during the winter. Same when the story moves to spring and summer. 

The epilogue was great and you are left with a great sense of family and belonging in the end. 

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey is a story about Jack and Mabel, an elderly couple who is childless living in the Alaskan wilderness.

This story was good, and the writing style was good. The characters were fairly written. What I didn't care for was the lack of quotations during certain conversations. I know why the author chose this, but I feel these conversations would have benefited from the use of italics rather than the lack of quotations. Other than that, I felt this to be a good and emotional story.

It was pure whimsy that led Mabel out into the snow to start a snowfight with her husband, Jack, and build a snow-girl with him. Until that point, they had been having a rough time on their Alaskan homestead. The couple were running low on money and supplies. The winter of 1920 might be their last in the wilderness before they had to pack it in and go back east. The morning after Mabel and Jack made the snow-girl, they found it destroyed and started to see a small girl running in the woods nearby. From this point on, it’s hard to tell if The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, is historical fiction or fantasy because we can never really know if Faina is the Snow Maiden from the Russian folktale or the orphaned daughter of a Russian trapper...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

This book was not what I expected it to be. It was lighter on magic, heavier on Alaskan frontier hardship, but once I adjusted my expectations, I ended up enjoying the book a lot.

It is one of those stories that you need to let yourself really sink into slowly. The hardship and isolation of settling the Alaskan frontier is palpable, as is the grief Mabel feels over her inability to have children, and the tension that all this elicits in her long-time marriage. Over the course of the novel, Mabel and Jack, intentionally reclusive at the start, begin to connect with their neighbors and form a small but tight community.

And in the center of this historical pioneer drama is just a touch of magic and mystery, when Mabel and Jack discover a nine-year-old girl who seems to live in the woods after they build a snow child. Faina flits in and out of the families' lives over the next eight years, growing into womanhood without ever becoming less elusive. Is she a real girl, or a product of Mabel and Jack's hopes and dreams? Either way, she is captivating, and the ambiguity of her sat well with me. It's a beautiful story about a harsh time and place, and even harsher heartbreak.