The Snow Child

by Eowyn Ivey

Mabel’s knack for conjuring troubles, present or future, wore on him.

so overtaken by shame and rage

I love the nuance of this book, how the curtain falls and waves. We understand. Perfectly. Don't need details. In that wat it's very fairytale-like.

longing. It was a self-indulgence she didn’t often permit herself,

but instead fatherhood had arrived quietly, gradually, over the course of years, and he had been blind to

It wasn’t sorrow or love, disappointment or knowledge; it was everything at once.

golden silver,

the flowers could be mistaken for snowflakes,

she slid the scissors and hair into her pocket.

… Hope is the thing with feathers… perches in the soul… to have and to hold… Do you?… hurry… hurry… to the ragged wood… no roses at my head… Do you?… until death do you part… until death… I do… I do… I do… I do…

chickadee’s,

He can’t just come to a birdsong.

She felt old and strong, like the mountains and the river. She would find her way home.

“It’s snowing,” she said.

that I was on a quest to find “my” book.

This was the story I had been longing to tell my entire life.

“If Willa Cather and Gabriel García Marquéz had collaborated on a book, The Snow Child would be it.”

Ivey sets up the two most powerful forces in any story: fear on the one hand, potential for the miraculous on the other.”