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The Girl Who Can’t Grow Up
Jan. 7th, 2014 12:11 amI’ve been thinking more about Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child, specifically about the ending. What makes the first two-thirds of the book so interesting is Ivey’s ability to hold possibilities in suspension. Is Faina a snow child, magically born out of the snowgirl Mabel and her husband Jack made? Or is she just a normal girl, living alone in the wilderness after her father drank himself to death? Or is she somehow both?
But this balancing act falls apart in the story’s third section - although it is, perhaps, a little unfair for me to blame the plot for continuing to follow the basic outline of the Russian fairytale that spawned it.
The question of Faina’s nature isn’t resolved, but the question of whether she can live with other people or grow up is. Clearly, Faina can’t.
This is how these stories so often end: the fairy girl either disappears (as in The House without Windows) or becomes less than herself, like in the later Anne of Green Gables books. It’s an ending with the long weight of trope behind it, but it’s not the ending that I wanted or perhaps needed out of the book. I’m tired of reading about magical girls who can’t - not who don’t, or don’t want to, but can’t - grow up.
But this balancing act falls apart in the story’s third section - although it is, perhaps, a little unfair for me to blame the plot for continuing to follow the basic outline of the Russian fairytale that spawned it.
The question of Faina’s nature isn’t resolved, but the question of whether she can live with other people or grow up is. Clearly, Faina can’t.
This is how these stories so often end: the fairy girl either disappears (as in The House without Windows) or becomes less than herself, like in the later Anne of Green Gables books. It’s an ending with the long weight of trope behind it, but it’s not the ending that I wanted or perhaps needed out of the book. I’m tired of reading about magical girls who can’t - not who don’t, or don’t want to, but can’t - grow up.
