Review: The Snow Child

Title: The Snow Child
Author: Eowyn Ivey
Length: 389 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Literary fiction, Fantasy
Source: Purchased
My Rating:
Synopsis (from Goodreads): 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.

My Review: I read this book about a month after it came out. As soon as I read the description I ordered it. It promised to have historical fiction, mystery, magic, love, and a Russian fairytale all rolled into one. I couldn't resist. The truth is that it did have all of these and the writing was beautiful. I devoured the story.  However, once I was finished I had the feeling that I missed something, that there was something I didn't understand. Soon after I came across a version of the fairytale this story was based on, Little Daughter of the Snow .  I picked it up hoping that it would help me understand the ending of The Snow Child. This didn't help me feel any clearer, as this version had been mention in  The Snow Child. but I enjoyed it's story and beautiful illustrations.  I will hopefully have time to re-read this story and find what I was missing so I can say I loved this book as I felt I should.

If you've read it or happen to read it, as I would recommend, I would love to hear your impressions.