Yes, hurrah! I am horribly behind in reading my programming text for the course I’m taking this Fall semester, and I’ve managed to get sick again, but all that doesn’t matter because I read a book ... purely for pleasure … and it was wonderful!!!
The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman, author of Practical Magic (which was made into one of my all-time favourite chick flicks starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) is, according to the dust jacket, a book that “illuminates the bonds and mysteries that connect mother and daughter, sister and brother, woman and man.”
When she was eight years old, our unnamed narrator made a terrible wish. She wished that her mother would die. And her mother did. Wracked with grief and blame, our narrator creates a fairy tale for herself in which she becomes the girl who climbed a mountain and refused to move, becoming frozen in place for all eternity. The Ice Queen continues to function, moving through the motions of life, never really living or feeling until one day she relocates from New Jersey to Orlon County, Florida to be closer to her brother Ned. Orlon County is a place renowned for having the most lightning strikes and lightning strike survivors and not long after her move, the Ice Queen is struck, causing a miraculous awakening in her life.
Told from the first person perspective our unnamed narrator leaps to life through Hoffman’s prose. It is only as I write this, trying to describe this book, that I realize the woman whose life I so intimately followed has no name. Yet, she is as real to me as I am, as you are. A powerful, moving book, The Ice Queen will keep you turning the pages.
Till next time, happy reading J
L
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