[.ca] The Ice Queen: A Novel (ISBN 0316154385)

magic.......:
i did not enjoy this as much as previous novels, it was very dark & though this is alice's trademark, somehow i found it too depressing, & the story hard to stay with, though for all that, there is something magic about all her books & they all leave you with this odd tingle, a bit like an out of body experience, a journey into another dimension, & also inspire with their own twist on everyday events & occurences & how we take them for granted!

AN AFFIRMATION OF LIFE AND ALL THAT IT OFFERS:
Remember childhood superstitions? "Step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back." So, as youngsters we did all we could do to avoid those sidewalk cracks. How about wishing upon a star? Many of us once believed that if you wished upon the first star you saw at night and wished hard enough that wish just might come true. Fortunately, most of us do not have the ability of Alice Hoffman's narrator who begins her story by saying, "Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things, they burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back. They bruise and bake and come back to haunt you. I've made far too many wishes in my lifetime, the first when I was eight years old." Her wish was that she would never see her mother again, and that proves to be true. A fatal automobile accident on an icy road takes her mother's life and forever changes our heroine who grows up to become a librarian, an ice queen if you will, remaining apart, aloof and trying to convince herself that she does not care. Ned, her older brother by four years, takes a different route. He becomes a meteorologist, studying adverse weather conditions. In adulthood he invites her to join him in Florida. Once there, she is struck by lightning which serves to melt her long nurtured reserve. There are many other survivors of lightning strikes, one in particular - Lazarus Jones, who was supposedly dead for forty minutes after being struck. Once she begins to thaw the ice queen realizes all that she has been missing and seeks out Lazarus. The love affair that develops between them is pure Hoffman - a bit of magic as fire meets ice. Written in impeccable prose, The Ice Queen is superbly crafted, the work of a master wordsmith. This all too brief story is an affirmation of life and all that it offers.; it is one we will not soon forget. Stage, film and television actress Nancy Travis gives a superb voice performance, appropriately reflecting first the pain and then the recovery of a human spirit. - Gail Cooke