Customer Reviews

The Ice Queen : A Novel

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've been an Alice Hoffman fan since TURTLE MOON. While some of her later efforts have left me a bit flat, THE ICE QUEEN grabbed me and held on until the very last word on the very last page.

An almost invisible librarian from New Jersey lives an almost invisible life, carefully removing herself from any emotional attachments after the death of her mother when she was a young girl.

Her older brother, Ned, is her portal to the outside world. When their grandmother dies, Ned moves her to Florida, where's he's a married professor.

On a particulary hot day, the librarian (whose name is never given) survives a direct hit by lightning. She reluctantly agrees to become part of a study with other lightning strike survivors. She hears of a man named Lazarus Jones . . . nicknamed so because he was apparently dead for 40 minutes after a lightning strike, woke up, and simply walked out the hospital.

Our ice queen is compelled to find Lazarus Jones and hear his side of the story. Jones, it seems, is still burning (literally) from the strike, while our heroine's world has gone cold and gray (literally).

One of the wonderful things about reading anything Hoffman writes is that you must suspend your traditional beliefs and abandon universal truths to completely "get" her stories.

I read the book in one sitting. Mystical. Intriguing. Thought-provoking. Ultimately satisfying.

Yep. That's Hoffman at her best.

Enjoy!!

Death is the subject. Not the kind that appears after years and years, almost welcome, but death that snatches loved ones away, leaving survivors to deal with the shock of loss. The girl in the story is eight when she makes her first fateful wish, resentful that her mother is leaving for the evening. The mother dies in an accident and the girl (who remains nameless throughout) believes she caused her mother's death. She turns herself into ice in an effort to avoid any more pain.

Later, when the woman's brother, Ned, moves his sister to Florida from New Jersey, the thirty-something woman remains as frozen and isolated as a princess in a fairy tale. Carelessly, she makes another fateful wish, to be struck by lightning. Viola! Once more her wish is granted. Now a survivor of a lightning strike, like others gathered for a scientific study, the woman has great difficulty returning to a normal life. But this lady has already marked herself, believing she has the ability to wish away life or bring on a lightning strike.

Through her meetings with other survivors, the woman, like a turtle, gradually pokes her head out to notice the others who inhabit the world, even in this bizarre situation. Piqued by curiosity about a man who is dead for forty minutes before returning to life, she follows an impulse to meet Lazarus Jones. They are opposites, he fire and she ice. They meet in the dark, igniting each other, a combustible romance that cannot last but is impossible to resist.

The woman's long, slow awakening is the theme of the novel, her quest to understand death and free herself from the restraints that have turned her life into a hollow shell: "The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out." Unfortunately, there is no spark to ignite this tepid plot, although there is the occasional flash of brilliant language associated with this author's work. The problem lies not in the fable of the girl who turns herself to ice, but in the shallow characters. The woman is never more than one-dimensional, caught in her own childish egocentricity. It is hard to imagine why anyone would go to the trouble to wake up this sleeping, self-obsessed beauty. Even the fire and ice love affair is disappointing. What should be instant combustion produces mere puffs of smoke. How could anyone find relief or completion in this cold-hearted, distant woman?

Hoffman is a writer of exquisite sensibilities, with a number of lyrical novels and a devoted following. The Ice Queen is an exception to the rule; Hoffman has a long list of powerful work to reward her readers. Luan Gaines/2005.

Alice Hoffman has always been a master of character development, and she continues to weave her magic in this electrifying novel. The main character, a self-punishing librarian, takes the reader on a fascinating journey of forgiveness and self-realization. Along the way she learns that things are not always as they seem, and "truths" on which a life is based, may not be true at all. This beautifully written story will be enjoyed by all Hoffman fans. I highly recommend it.

THE ICE QUEEN by talented writer, Alice Hoffman is a book well worth reading.

Colorful, insightful, thought-provoking and entertaining. Bottom line...An enjoyable story that held my complete attention throughout the whole book.

Loved the characters and the plot. I read this great story a week ago and I am still thinking about it. Yes, this story is that interesting!

(Highly Recommended!)

Magic and mysticism, romance and redemption are flawlessly blended in Alice Hoffman's 18th novel. As many know, Ms. Hoffman is a mellifluous writer, exploring through fiction the myriad relationships between human beings and a sometimes intercessory fate.

Such prose merits a smooth, carefully enunciated almost musical reading, and just such a delivery is found with stage and television actress Nancy Travis. She effortlessly carries readers along as the unnamed protagonist feels the cold within her begin to thaw and finally warm.

Opening with the lines, "Be careful what you wish for......," we meet a librarian who keeps to herself. She is guarded, alone, and convinces herself that is the way she wishes to be. Her mother died when she was a child, and she feels responsible for that death. How better to atone than by sacrificing herself, refusing to like, love or really live?

One day as she's standing in her house she is struck by lightning, literally. This affects her in several bizarre ways and she searches out another lightning survivor, one Lazarus Jones, so known because he appeared to be dead for about 40 minutes then simply rose and walked off. She feels he has much to teach her. He is her polar opposite; she was all ice, he is all fire.

What could have happened to them that caused such dramatic manifestations? More importantly, in the present, what could become of their coupling?

Leave it to Alice Hoffman to once again intrigue and entertain.

- Gail Cooke

Clever and beautiful Alice Hoffman's The Ice Queen is an exploration into the human psyche. Having moments of sheer brilliance the characters of this work come to life in a masterful way.

After the loss of her mother when she was a child, a loss she blames herself for as one could think only a child could, the protagonist becomes rigid and emotionally devoid. Her reaction is understandably modern response as many today insulate themselves into not feeling anything rather than feeling both pleasure and pain. It is also the response found often in traumatized children. However some of the themes of this book actually harken back to the works of the ancient Greeks.

Her brother becomes a meteorologist in contrast to "the ice queen" and here we have two approaches to our lives: the logical and the mystical.

However her wishes again become reality as an adult when she is struck by lightening. So is the ice queen omnipotent or hounded by the Furies?

First believing she caused a death, then as an adult surviving death she find herself seeking out a man nicknamed "Lazerus" who was also struck by lightening. Ah, the Gods!

Through it all the ice queen journeys on a path of enlightenment.

This is my first exposure to Alice Hoffman's work and I find it both enchanting and intellectually satisfying. A Jungian fairy tale that I recommend.

I'm a big fan of Alice Hoffman and I eagerly await the release of each of her new novels. My appreciation for her work only increased when I saw her speak at a book reading a few years ago when she was releasing The Probable Future. She has an amazing way with words, and the lyricism and imagery in her novels are what make them so compelling. The problem with such a well-loved and prolific author is that each of her new books must be compared to her previous ones. And because she has set her own bar so high, even her good novels pale in comparison to her really great ones.

THE ICE QUEEN features many of Hoffman's signature themes, family relationships, feelings of longing, and a slight supernatural edge that makes the story seem just this side of fantasy. The unnamed narrator in this novel feels that she has cursed herself to a life of misery, and the novel follows her eventual path to redemption.

The story is interesting if a little spare. In this book, Hoffman uses the character's love of Grimm's fairy tales and her fascination with death as clues to the way she views the world. When the narrator becomes a survivor of a lightning strike herself, she starts to seek out other people who have cheated death, and it is those relationships that help her heal and eventually lead her home.

While this book doesn't compare to Hoffman's best - The River King is my personal favorite - it's still a well-written, compelling escape for a cold winter's day.

I could not believe that Alice Hoffman wrote this book - it was graceless, dark and depressing -- and just plain weird. The main character was one-dimensional and the plot was deadly boring. There was way too much strange stuff going on that does not deserve to be called "magic realism", for which she is famous. And it rambled on and on......

I have been a fan of this author's since forever, it seems, and read every book of hers. I have not loved every one, but none have disappointed me as much as this one. I had to struggle to finish it.

Oh, well, I guess she cannot please me all the time!

I was pulled into this story from page one. The deep, intense, introspective writing style fed my passion to know my characters inside and out. Actually we knew less of the outside of our narrator, than the inside, but therein lies the intrigue. Only in a well-written novel do we get to see all of someone -- real life only offers the tip of the iceberg. Seeing someone's deepest motivations and their often contrary behavior, so beautifully and effectively described, helps us all respect the unseen in our daily contacts. Each one of us also hides defining secrets, but you will probably never know them, and will never really understand. Hoffman gives us the satisfaction of knowing (and therefore growing). That, to me, is one of the greatest praises of fiction. The story here, is not the gift (although it's fascinating), the insight is. Well worth the read.

Alice Hoffman doesn't write novels so much as Romances--in the Hawthorne, not the Bodice Buster, sense.

That is, she takes a small group of characters and subjects them to something extreme, and watches what happens.

In this case it is a sister and brother and some more or less peripheral lovers and friends.

And as always with Hoffman, she takes metaphors and makes them reality. The heroine is literally an Ice Queen because she freezes her heart and her life, after impulsively wishing her mother dead and (she thinks) causing it to happen.

Not even the blinding heat of Florida can warm her; it takes a lightning-strike to begin to thaw her emotions out. And it takes more than one lightning-strike. For a time her lover is a twice-struck man; and her only friend is a lightning-struck boy (both of whom also go through dying-to-be-reborn episodes).

The heroine does eventually thaw her emotions--but again, not without undergoing death, this time the death of her beloved brother.

She also finds new life in her brother's daughter--who can be the girl the heroine never allowed herself to be.

The story doesn't so much have a plot as themes. The main theme is: accept love or die, literally or figuratively. But love keeps reaching out, no matter how many times it is refused. And it isn't just people who offer love: as always with Hoffman, nature offers love, even in its harshest forms, like lightning, like death, if only we recognize it.

So this book is less like a conventional novel and more like a large poem: connections keep reappearing and deepening, everything connects to everything else, till a critical mass is reached and the book starts to breathe, like something alive.