The Snow Child

By: Eowyn Ivey

Narrated by: Therese Plummer

Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2012 Eowyn Ivey (P)2018 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"The Snow Child is enchanting from beginning to end. Ivey breathes life into an old tale and makes it as fresh as the season' s first snow. Simply lovely." (Keith Donohue, New York Times best-selling author of The Stolen Child)

"The real magic of The Snow Child is that it's never as simple as it seems, never moves exactly in the direction you think it must.... Sad as the story often is, with its haunting fairy-tale ending, what I remember best are the scenes of unabashed joy." (Ron Charles, Washington Post)

"Eowyn Ivey's exquisite debut transports the reader away to a world almost out of time, into a fairytale destined to both chill and delight. Her portrayal of an untamed Alaska is so detailed you can feel the snowflakes on your own eyelashes, even as her characters' desperate quest for, and ultimate redemption by, love will warm your heart." (Melanie Benjamin, author of Alice I Have Been)

WOW!!! A MUST Listen - even better than reading.

Been an Audible Subscriber since 1996. This is truly one of the most beautiful fiction audiobooks I have listened to. It is even better than reading the book (I ended up borrowing the text because I loved the poetic imagery and prose). the narrator is amazing and the writing is out of this world. Warning will may you tear up (and I am NOT a sentimental person) multiple times throughout the story. A Must listen. I would expect this to eventually be turned into a movie. However, the audiobook I can guarantee will always be better because It lets your imagination run. Just get it and you will NOT be disappointed.

Had the book finished in less than 2 days

I loved this a cleaned the whole house solely bc I wanted to keep listening to the book. The reader really gives each character their own voice. My last audible book took me a month to finish. If that tells you anything.

Soon to be a Hallmark Channel Movie!

If you're a fan of the Hallmark Channel, you'll probably love this book. if you're not, then, well, who knows. I found the middle of the story to be the most interesting. The ending was pure maple syrup. While the snow child (the character) was interesting, nothing really significant happens in this book (other than life on a homestead in Alaska). The story is more character driven (and you could say that Alaska is one of the characters) than plot driven, but I felt like we didn't get to know the snow child enough. I wanted to know more about her, and what she was thinking. We start to find out more in the middle of the book, but then, for me, it went off a cliff. Your Mileage May Vary.

Better Left as a Child’s Fairy Tale

I was disappointed. I thought the premise held much promise, but the story was slow and the language and dialogue too simplistic. I appreciated the author’s efforts to describe the beauty and isolation of Alaska, but the storyline wasn’t sufficient to hold my interest. The narration and characters’ voices were fine, but the tone was drippingly sweet and much more suited to a children’s story.

Part adventure, part love story, part fairy tale.

Because of the way it was set up, I was afraid it was going to be too predictable and I would not like it, but it turned out that there were some interesting plot twists among the more predictable ones. All in all I liked the story quite a bit.

The narrator, Therese Plummer, was excellent except for an annoying habit of taking a breath after the first word of the sentence. After I got used to it, it didn’t bother me so much any more and I could enjoy her otherwise excellent narration.

Great read and excellent performance!

I really enjoyed this story! That being said, the only thing that I found slightly annoying was the sappiness towards the end. I also would've like to have seen this story take a more Magical Realism approach but I really did like it. I find it hard to finish novels that I've downloaded but I had no problem with this one.

A Must Listen To

This is an intriguing story with an Oscar-worthy performance by the reader. Don't miss it!

One of my favorite audible purchases to date.

I really love this book. It’s touching and mysterious, and definitely going down as an all time favorite read.

Disappointed

I love this folk tale and was excited to listen to this version.
Sadly, it droned on forever, I skipped ahead often just on the off chance it would get better, it did not. Way too Hallmark card for me, to bad too, because the landscape descriptions are beautiful, and the Snow Child folklore is wonderful. Look for the picture book. Much better use of your time.

Fantasy meets reality

The book was a well written tale of a couple suffering from the grief of losing a baby. They want to get away from it all to be alone as a couple and they move to Alaska. Its there they meet the difficult reality of living off of the cold harsh lands in Alaska in the 1930's. I is also there that a thin line between fantasy and reality start to blur. I liked the story for the most part but for me there was too much left unexplained. A bit of that is ok but for me it was too much.