The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

The Snow Child

by Eowyn Ivey

In this magical debut, a couple's lives are changed forever by the arrival of a little girl, wild and secretive, on their snowy doorstep.

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.

Reviewed by Bianca on

4 of 5 stars

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It was beautiful, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed, if you lived at all. 

A magical tale about a childless couple and the mysterious girl who suddenly appears in their lives after one winter night. Kinda slow, but really beautiful and heartbreaking. ❄️💙

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Reading updates

  • 12 September, 2020: Started reading
  • 12 September, 2020: on page 58 out of 400 14%
  • 20 September, 2020: on page 101 out of 400 24%
  • 29 September, 2020: on page 149 out of 400 36%
  • 11 October, 2020: on page 193 out of 400 46%
  • 5 November, 2020: on page 238 out of 400 57%
  • 8 November, 2020: on page 295 out of 400 71%
  • 13 December, 2020: Finished reading
  • 13 December, 2020: Reviewed