Midwinter Magic

A few weeks ago, in December, I read The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. I thought it was a wonderful book - I've written about it below. It's set in Alaska, and just as I finished it, I glanced out of the window - it was early morning, and still dark - and in the light of a street lamp, I saw that it had just begun to snow. It seemed quite magical.

Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition: photo by Frank Hurley

Since then, I seem to have been in thrall to books set in the frozen north - or, well, in frozen Britain. I read Susan Price's Ghost Drum series, set in the snowy north of Russia (again, scroll down); then, in company with lots of fans all over the world, I re-read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. This, if you've not read it, tells the story of Will Stanton, who, one mid-winter, finds out that he is not just an ordinary boy, but the last of the Old Ones, whose task it is to fight in a battle against the Dark. As the struggle begins, the snow falls, until it is so thick that normal life goes into abeyance.

It turns out that Robert MacFarlane is a great fan, and he suggested on Twitter that people should re-read it during the season in which it is set, and discuss it. Lots of artists took part too, and posted marvellous illustrations - it was great!

Then I went on to Stef Penney's Under A Pole Star. I'd had this on my Kindle for a while, but somehow it hadn't been the right time to read it. Now it was. Set in the late 19th century, it's about Flora, the daughter of a whaler, who yearns to get back to the Arctic where she went to as a child with her father. There she meets Jakob de Beyn, an American geologist and explorer, and the two, already both in love with the Arctic, fall deeply and irretrievably in love. Unfortunately, there is a third player in their story, Lester Armitage: a driven and dangerously ambitious explorer. Things don't end well. It's a vivid evocation of the frozen landscape and of the Inuit people who are Flora's friends, and it's cleverly told in several different stories and two different timescales.

Following that, I headed east to Iceland and read two detective books by Ragnar Jonasson, Black Out and Rupture. I read the first two in the series some time ago; they're about a young policeman called Ari Thor, and like most good detective series, they're as much about the lives of the characters as about the crimes that have been committed. And, naturally enough, there's a lot of snow.

And now I'm nearing the end of another book by Eowyn Ivey, called To the Bright Edge of the World, also set in Alaska. But more of that next time.

What is the fascination of the poles? (I just heard on the radio of a musician who is about to set off to the Arctic to be a song-writer in residence, so it's not just me!) I remember when I was a child reading in a big, dark red encyclopaedia, called The Children's Wonder Book or something similar, about the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, and thinking how much I'd like to see them. (I still would.) And I'm fascinated by the eerie beauty of the photographs of Ernest Shackleton's Antarcticexpedition; I have a book about them.

Of course, I could go. These days it's quite easy - not as it was for Flora, Jakob and Shackleton. Perhaps one day I will. But in the meantime, how delightful it is to read about extremes of cold while curled up in front of a warm fire - to hear the call of the icy wastes, but to leave it for others to answer.

PS Some feedback, please: do you prefer the font smallish, like this, or larger, like the post below? Thanks.

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey

A few weeks ago, I was in Brussels, staying with my son and his family. I woke up early, when it was still dark, and settled down to finish the book I'd been reading. It was The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey; it's about a couple living in Alaska who have lost one child and never been able to have another. Then, out of the snowy landscape, a girl appears. Is she real, or have they created her out of their need?As I finished it, I glanced out of the window. In the light of a street lamp, I saw that the soft drizzle was turning first to sleet, then to snow. I didn't expect it to settle, but it did. It was a magical moment - it was as if the book itself had conjured up the snow, just as the couple had conjured up the child.

That snowfall was the finishing touch, but even without it, this is a beautiful, brilliant book. It's based on the old Russian folk tale of Snegurochka, which is about an old couple who make the child they have never had out of snow. In this story, the couple are called Jack and Mabel. In middle age, they have moved north to Alaska as pioneers, to carve a farm and a new life out of the wilderness. The landscape is vividly evoked, with its abundance of wildlife (including bears, pine martens, silver foxes, lynx and salmon), its remote mountains, its swift-running rivers - its beauty.

Mabel has never recovered from the death of her baby some years before - one reason for the move to Alaska is to escape the heartbreak of seeing other people's children. They keep themselves to themselves, but eventually realise they need other people in order to survive, and they make friends with their neighbours, George and Esther. Esther, practical, warm and unconventional, is the perfect friend for quiet, sad, self-contained Mabel, whose icy heart begins to thaw. She and Jack begin to live again, and to rediscover each other.

And then an extraordinary thing happens. After a snowfall, Jack makes a child out of snow. And immediately after that, they glimpse a real child, who has apparently emerged from the snow. Is she real?

Well, she turns out to be. But there's more than a sprinkling of magic about this child.

I won't say any more. I know I'm late to the party with this book and many of you will already have read it, but I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't. But - I read a lot. I read many books I would be happy - no, delighted - to have written myself. But it's not often I read one and think - there. That's how to do it. That's what it's all about. Mal Peet's Keeper was one, and this is another.