The Book Mistresses​​

In our discussion of Eowyn Ivy's, "The Snow Child", We found that many of us interpreted this book differently. As a group we kept the discussion in the magical-realism and fairytale genre. The plot of the story revolves around a snow child that comes into the lives of a childless couple living in Alaska. Ivy leaves the validity of the snow child character to the reader's discretion. Our group had not quite half of us believing Faina, the snow child, was a real character in the story while two members believed she was an imaginary child, and the remaining four members were unsure whether Faina was of flesh and blood or born from Mabel and Jack's imagination. We thought the book was very well written. Ivy does a great job developing the characters giving them strengths and flaws that were believable and through them, there were moments that the reader could relate to.  The decriptions of the setting of the Alaskan wilderness were expectional. So much so that we as readers felt the setting became it's own character. There were moments in the story that as readers we were transported into the harsh, extreme beauty of the land by Ivy's dicriptive writing style. Our favorite being Mabel's brush with death towards the begining of the novel. As a native Alaskan, the author is able to use her own experiences to give credibility to her discriptions of the land, the brutality of the cold winters and the nuances of survival in daily life. The use of foreshadowing and symbolism leads to interesting reading as well as discussion. Finally, the cental themes of love and loss, survival, doubt, hope and faith interwines the plot, the setting and the characters through out story take the reader along the journey. Several members mentioned they felt the story became  predictable yet as a group we could not say what actually happened at the end, leaving us to make our own conclusions.