Book Review - 'The Snow Child' by Eowyn Ivey

2020 EDIT: Content warning: sexism, spinster-shaming, non-mother-shaming, stillbirth mention, attempted suicide.



Upon rereading, after so many years, I recognise that the writing in 'The Snow Child' is lovely. The hard, harsh, lonely, cold atmosphere of the snowy mountains of Alaska is conveyed masterfully. You feel like you are there while reading.

But apart from the leads, the old married couple Mabel and Jack, I didn't care much for any of the characters. The book is 400 pages long, and could have easily been shortened by half at most, by cutting out the meandering and padding via descriptions. There isn't really any plot to speak of in this fairy tale retelling that isn't "modern".

There's also the fixed gender roles, and every single female in 'The Snow Child' has to be a mother, or had carried a child at least one time in her life, no matter the circumstances and unlikelihood. Their offspring are all boys. Of course.

And there's this paragraph, in a chapter told from Jack's narrative point of view, while he is speaking to a married father:


'[...] If you said you didn't have children it sounded like a choice, and what kind of craziness would that be? If you said you couldn't, the conversation turned awkward while they contemplated your manliness or your wife's health.' - page 19


I know this is set in 1920, but that is too much. I felt awful typing out those words. They might even be triggering to some readers.

So if someone decides not to have children, freely, by choice, then they're "crazy"; and if they for whatever reason can't, then it's emasculating for the man and shameful for the woman. They're both failures for not living up to their perceived roles in society.

The book doesn't really refute and challenge this. No one changes their roles throughout the story.

Mabel, the bereaved older woman who gave birth to a stillborn (male) infant ten years previously, never considers that maybe part of her depression is due to the stifling pressure put on her by other people - to fit in a limited box in society, based on her sex. Family members had not-so secretly shamed her for not being a proper wife for Jack, for not giving him a child. Nowadays she spends her days bored out of her skull inside her cabin home in Alaska (which Jack built himself apparently; I'm not sure how he managed that when it's been established that the older man living in the cold wilderness has trouble working hard labour, but whatever), where she just bakes, cooks, cleans, feeds the animals, sews, and waits for her husband to come home at the end of the day from hunting and selling things. She occasionally sketches as well.

Clearly Mabel is oppressed by more than the isolation and loneliness in the dark, snowy forest. However, I don't think that this is ever addressed. Her attempted suicide by drowning in a frozen river in the first chapter is also never brought up again.

Looking after children seems like the main goal and light and key to happiness for Mabel. It's pretty insulting and insensitive, given her circumstances.

Typically, Mabel is the fanciful and fairy tale loving spouse, and Jack is the hardened, reasonable one. Fixed gender roles, and all that. Well, at least Mabel is given a female friend to talk to, in the form of her "rough" and "nontraditional" neighbour Esther, who is still a stay-at-home wife and mother of three boys, so that doesn't count for much.

But the writing and setting of 'The Snow Child' is exceptional, even though the story and characters are nothing to write home about. Plus it's too long. No longer do I naively favour it - as I'm now older and wiser I can't forgive a story easily for issues such as sexism - stories have power and influence on consumers - but I don't regret having ever read it.

Final Score: 3/5





Original Review:



It is the 1920s. All Mabel and Jack have in consolation for getting old is each other. They lost a child at birth some ten years previously, and even when they decide to move to the foreboding cold but freedom of Alaska for a new life away from people who know them and what they are missing in their lives, they still feel something is missing in their lives. A child.

Grief nearly kills them in more ways than one. Mabel and Jack eventually start growing apart themselves.

So who or what else do they have now?

Well, maybe George and Esther, their friendly and good-natured neighbours who are practically everything the couple are not but who are a positive influence.

Or maybe a little girl who may or may not have come from the snow child the couple built together in a moment of frenzied imagination outside their cabin.

Is the girl real? Is this a fairy tale? And if it is, will it have a happy ending? How will it effect Mabel and Jack in their late stage in life, giving love to a child they can never have?

I want to hug 'The Snow Child' again and again. It is everything a book should be in my opinion - a memorable cast of characters, brilliant writing without going overboard with the prose, cleverly set-up character development, a breathtaking atmosphere conveyed through the setting and what happens there, and simply fabulous quirks and additions; like the fox, and a fairy tale book within a book.

I really felt I was on the harsh freezing mountains of Alaska - this truly is Eowyn Ivey's native homeland. Snow has never been so beautiful.

Here are a couple of the many gorgeous passages in the novel, weaving character and thought with circumstances and setting:

'She [Mabel] entered last winter blind, not knowing what to expect in this new, hard land. Now she knew. By December, the sun would rise just before noon and skirt the mountaintops for a few hours of twilight before sinking again. Mabel would move in and out of sleep as she sat in a chair beside the woodstove. She would not pick up any of her books; the pages would be lifeless. She would not draw; what would there be to capture in her sketchbook? Dull skies, shadowy corners. It would become harder and harder to leave the warm bed each morning. She would stumble about in a walking sleep, scrape together meals and drape wet laundry around the cabin. Jack would struggle to keep the animals alive. The days would run together, winter's stranglehold tightening.' - Page 2-3

'Mabel tempered herself. She imagined running to the girl when she appeared at the edge of the trees and throwing her arms around her, spinning her in circles. But she didn't. She waited patiently in the cabin and pretended not to notice her arrival. When the child came indoors, Mabel did not scrub her clean, brush the leaves and lichen from her hair, wash her clothes and dress her anew. It was true – she sometimes pictured the child wearing a lovely ruffled dress and pretty bows in her hair.' - Page 119.

'The Snow Child' reads like magical realism in that it leaves clues that give way to both possibilities that Faina the girl from the snow either is or isn't a supernatural creature. Ivey wisely leaves the mystery of Faina for the reader to reach their own conclusion to. Though this book isn't really about Faina herself, but more about Mable and Jack (though we read from Mabel's perspective more often than Jack's) and how they cope with this newer and most bizarre change in their lives.

An absolutely enchanting, subtle, emotional, and intense take on the snow child fairy tale. It is a tale about loneliness and finding companionship and love in the most unexpected of places, be it from the kindness of neighbours or from the strangeness of children in the woods.

'The Snow Child' by Eowyn Ivey is a debut and bestseller that is also a masterpiece sure to captivate people from all walks of life and touch their hearts, rendering them sad that it had to end at 400 pages.

The reading experience was like that for this reviewer anyway.

Final Score: 5/5