"She looked directly up into the northern lights and she wondered if those cold-burning spectres might not draw her breath, her very soul, out of her chest and into the stars." 
 This is a book filled with pain, sorrow and a delicate flutter of a thousand snowflakes brushing gently against your cheeks. It is a book of coldness and stillness, set against a brutally wild backdrop of Alaska's thick forests and howling wolves. Ivey unites human fragility with the wildness of the nature, and the result is mesmerizing. As I read this book I could almost feel the cold snow crackling beneath my feet or see the warmth of my breath vibrate through the air. 
 In some way, Ivey's writing and scenery reminded me of "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern. While the two books have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common plotwise, they're both built on descriptive scenes tied together with a beautiful language. However, Eowyn Ivey takes her writing a step further, allowing the very structure of her sentences to reflect the stillness in her scenery. 
 Faina is a creature of this stillness and coldness. She has stepped out from a fairy-tale and into the lives of Mabel and Jack in the Alaskan wilderness. She is an angel, an ethereal snow fairy, and yet she is an unattainable elementary spirit, hiding from cultural estrangement and requirements. Everything about her is mythical and as she mostly speaks in silence, there's a distance between her and the reader - a distance that allows her to remain an unsolved mystery. 
 Another aspect of the book is portrayed in Mabel and Jack's deep sorrow, tearing them violently apart, lingering on the edge of suicide and depression. Their eternal struggle cut deep into my heart, and Ivey's portrayal of their unhappiness is one of the most touching and realistic aspects of the book. When they find their way back to life, it is both with the help of Faina and their loving neighbors. 
 "The Snow Child" is partly a fairy-tale, and partly a very realistic tale of families, lovers and their homes. Wrapped in a deep layer of snow, stillness and melancholic beauty, this is a true work of art. It will stay with me throughout every winter for the rest of my life. 
 "In my old age, I see that life is often more fantastic and terrible than stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees."