“The Snow Child” by Eowyn Ivey – Reality or Insanity?

When most of us think of Alaska, we probably picture some kind of gloom and snowy wasteland with a few buildings here and there. Well, I’ve personally never been there, but I do have a good idea of what the Alaskan wilderness looks like (thanks to pictures and Google Earth), and I can tell you one thing: it’s not a place I would want to live in. 

In The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, we follow the story of a childless couple, living on a farm in the Alaskan wilderness in 1920. Both Jack and Mabel are on the brink of losing their sanity from loneliness and the amount of hard work that needs to be done.

When the first snowfall comes, they decide to simply build a little child snowman, just for the heck of it. However, the next morning the snow child is gone, but the couple comes to meet a blonde-haired girl, Faina, who has apparently been living in the woods for God-knows how long now. As they learn more and more about her, the dark truths of the violent wilderness come to light, changing everyone involved.

I have to say, the premise for this book didn’t really excite me much, but I still gave it a shot, mostly because of the setting which I found to be sublime. It is interesting to see how Jack and Mabel are transformed throughout the book, how the apparition of this child in their lives fills them with life and hope regardless of the troubles that are ahead of them. Naturally, the story of Faina, arguably the main plotline, is curious to follow as well, looking a lot like a fairy tale that spilled over into the grim reality of life.

One of my favorite aspects about the story is that I found it hard to tell what was the truth and what wasn’t. Where they hallucinating all of it? After all, they have spent a considerable amount of time suffering in a cold and desolate wasteland, conditions which would predispose many people to hallucinate and even make up lies to believe in. 

This line of thinking especially makes more sense as the book goes, as things begin to get more and more unbelievable. Is actual magic at work here? Or simply the delusions of desperate and depraved human minds? I know that probably wasn’t the intended point of the book, but that’s what I got out of it, and if you read from that perspective, I think anyone will be able to enjoy it. 

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Eowyn Ivey Personal site Eowyn Ivey is an American-born author who was born and raised in Alaska. After working for more than a decade as a critically-acclaimed reporter for Frontiersman newspaper, she moved towards the domain of creative writing, with The Snow Child being her debut novel. Her essays and short stories were printed in numerous publications, including Sunday Times Magazine and London’s Observer Magazine.