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• You must read this book. The author has taken a fairytale/folk tale of The Snow Child and created an amazing story. The setting is 1920s Alaska, Jack and Mabel, a middle-aged couple who seem just on the verge of surviving their new life in the Alaska woods. It seems that many times Mabel is ready to give up the will to live. Mabel longs for a child, but her and her husband remain childless and escape the east coast for the Alaska wilderness to lose themselves.Then Faina, a beautiful, feral child, slowly enters their lives. Mabel believes that she is a snow child that her and Jack created one night out of snow. The story happens in the winter and during snowfall. Jack and Mabel are changed by Faina's presence. But no one else has ever seen Faina or heard of a girl being able to survive the harsh Alaskan winters on her own. So who is she? I don't want to write more for fear of ruining this beautiful story. What makes this novel most remarkable is the quality of its writing. The descriptions are vibrant. The characters want love and happiness. Life on the farm seems real, with the dialogue kept to a minimum. What I liked the best was that even though the book seemed like a fairytale, I believed every bit of it.

  5.00 out of 5

  melaniehope

• Jack and Mabel live in a time where children were expected in a marriage. Mabel so wants to be a mother but she has only had one pregnancy and that ended in an early delivery of a child that did not survive. She and Jack didn't talk about it they just thought a fresh start was in order so they pulled up roots and started a homestead in Alaska. She with one set of dreams, he with another. Both not expressing them, both not talking, both afraid of the past, both trying to escape, both still yearning for a child.Mabel sees Alaska as a way to escape from all of the pity she sees in the eyes of family and friends. She just wants life to be her and Jack. Jack knows they can't make it in such a harsh land alone. He is too old to be breaking the land. He needs help. Mabel feels at fault for her inability to give him children but Jack does not blame her...Just at the right time a boisterous family comes into their life to help them manage their homestead. A family with three strong children. A woman who starts to bring Mabel out of her shell. Also at this time their appears a mystical child. A child that appears the day after Jack and Mabel make a small snowgirl. Is she real or is she a manifestation of all of Mabel's hopes and dreams?I cannot tell you the joy I found in this book. Despite the overall sadness of the main theme there was much to celebrate within. Faina, the snow child was a delight! In writing her dialog no quotation marks are used so you "hear" it in your head and wonder if she is real or not. She came to me as a whisper on a breeze. I felt as if I had been dropped into a snowglobe and was living in some kind of mystical snow world. The writing almost surrounded me and then fell like the little pieces of snow. This book is special; I cursed my reading schedule because I could not immediately start it over again. I know that I will find more when I do get the opportunity to drop again into Faina's magical world.It's by no means all magic and light. There is much depth to be found in the tale. Sadness and loss. The bonds of friendship and the power of love and what those two can do to keep a person from completely falling apart. I am not usually one for books with messages but this book stole my heart. It's a keeper and now sits on my top reads shelf. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think. I love a book that makes me do all of that and more.

  5.00 out of 5

  BrokenTeepee

• What can I say about this one? Simply amazing. I was drawn in from the first sentence and didn't want to put it down. I found myself considering it while doing other things and that's the mark of an amazing book for me. Something I can't put out of my mind...Well done Ms. Ivey! I can't wait to read what comes next!

  5.00 out of 5

  Pickle115

• Ivey's stunning debut novel is set in Alaska in the 1920s, where middle-aged couple Jack and Mabel are struggling to survive on their new homestead. While Jack is breaking his back every day trying to clear enough land to establish a farm, Mabel is quietly wilting under the winter sun and grieving for the stillborn baby that has prevented her ever having a child of her own. The only solace in this lonely existence is the rowdy Benson family on the next homestead - jovial George, his earthy wife Esther and their three sons. Then one night, during the first snow of the winter and in a moment of giddy high spirits, Jack and Mabel build a little girl out of snow outside their cabin. The next morning, to their dismay, the girl has been knocked down and Mabel's scarf and mittens are gone. Soon afterwards they catch a glimpse of a small girl flitting through the forest with a red fox in tow, and they are mystified. Is this the girl they created together, come alive through their shared longing for a child? Or is she just a little girl in need, trying to survive in the wilderness by herself? And so Faina comes into their lives, changing their world forever...It is an absolutely beautiful book, and well on track to be one of my favourites of this year. It's not a fast-paced story, but one that I wanted to savour and enjoy, page by page. Ivey's descriptions made me feel like I was there in the cabin and walking through the woods with her characters; I could feel the chill in the air, smell the spruce trees and taste the snow on the breeze. I think one of the things I liked best about the book was its tenderness and humanity. There were moments that made me smile, moments that made me sigh, and moments that made me well up. Every character pulled me in so that I was utterly invested in their happiness and wellbeing, and every conversation and interaction is rooted in such deep emotional awareness that it felt pitch-perfect and utterly real. Alongside this, of course, was the magical presence of Faina herself. She is such an ethereally beautiful character, yet also strong and brutally capable, so that the reader, like Jack and Mabel, never knows quite what to make of her. I like that this magical element - based on a Russian fairytale - is written with a very gentle touch, so that it never feels implausible and the reader is left to come to their own conclusions. Highly recommended to readers who like their books to be firmly rooted in human relationships, who appreciate being able to a get a real sense of place as they read, and who enjoy authors like Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen who interweave their novels with a thread of magic and wonder. Read it!

  5.00 out of 5

  elliepotten

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