Some decisions you make and some seem to be made for you.
The Ice Queen – Alice Hoffman
So. First “review” of a book. And I use these quotes loosely. I’m not an expert at this, but hope to be someday so this first one, and probably the few that come after, will be short. Just my thoughts for now, no fancy-shmancy literary criticism going on just yet.
The Ice Queen is more than a story, it’s almost an internal extensive self-dialogue. A t a young age the narrator (unnamed and it took me the whole novel to realize that) wishes her mother dead and her wish comes true. Because of this she wanders through the rest of her life half asleep, always cold and alone. When she is struck by lightning her brother moves her to Florida where the real meat of the story starts. She makes a friend, finds a lover, and salvages a relationship with her brother. In essence, it’s a coming of age story about a lonely woman who finds life on the other side of death. Hoffman’s voice of this character cannot be compared, it’s complete and true and feels one hundred percent real. The novel is tense and suspenseful at times, making you feel like the other shoe is about to drop. But it’s lonely and sad at others. We feel the Florida humidity and taste the oranges. Of the two Hoffman novels I’ve read, the other being The Third Angel, it’s not my favorite. But it is something writers should check out as a fabulous example of how to write a solid, consistent voice of a character. And it’s also full of lovely little “this is how life is” lines that belong in a book of quotes.
If I were to give it a star rating, I’d say 3 out of 5.
