Light on Snow (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Beyond the window of my father's shop, midwinter light skims the snow..." (more)
Key Phrases: orange tape, back hallway, Anita Shreve, Detective Warren, New Hampshire (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An after-school stroll leads to a life-altering event for widower Robert Dillon and his 12-year-old daughter, Nicky, in this delicate new novel by acclaimed author Shreve (All He Ever Wanted,etc.). In the woods surrounding their secluded home in Shepherd, N.H., Robert and Nicky make a startling discovery—a baby abandoned and left to die in the snow. The infant survives, but the incident leaves its mark. Still recovering from the painful loss of her mother and infant sister two years earlier, and readjusting to the shock of a sudden move from suburban Westchester to rural Shepherd, Nicky struggles to reconcile her innocent notions of adult integrity with the bleak reality of their discovery. The tenuous sense of normalcy Robert manages to sustain is broken with the appearance of Charlotte, the baby's young mother, on his doorstep. Retold 18 years later by an adult Nicky but written in the present tense, the story shifts brilliantly between childlike visions of a simple world and the growing realization of its cruel ambiguities. Aside from a few saccharine moments and a rather pat ending, Shreve does a skilled job of portraying grief, conflict and anger while leaving room for hope, redemption and renewal. Her characters are sympathetic without being pitiable, and her prose remains deceptively simple and eloquent throughout.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

I read and enjoy Anita Shreve's novels, which is noteworthy only because I'm male and Shreve's books are conspicuously lacking in submarines. Usually they are New England-set sagas involving smart women, cads and betrayal, but they also transcend formula, and Shreve moves comfortably through history in her fiction. My favorites among the small library she has given readers in the last decade or so include The Pilot's Wife and Fortune's Rocks, novels that share little more than a precisely rendered geography.

In her new novel, Light on Snow, she has moved inland from the New Hampshire seacoast to the tiny White Mountains hamlet of Shepherd. The tale begins with 12-year-old Nicky Dillon and her father snowshoeing a few weeks before Christmas in the forest that surrounds their home, only to hear a small cry that they presume is from a cat. It is followed by the sounds of a car door slamming and then an engine revving along a road in the distance. A moment later they discover that what they had thought was a cat is actually a newborn baby, left in a sleeping bag to die in the woods in the cold.

Their find is particularly wrenching because Nicky and her dad moved to New Hampshire from a tony Westchester suburb of New York City two years earlier, after suffering an incalculable loss: Nicky's mom and baby sister died together in a car accident. Dad gave up his job with a prestigious architectural firm in Manhattan, packed up the home and took Nicky to a secluded house in an obscure village where they knew absolutely no one. There he has built furniture, some of which he occasionally sells, while sleepwalking through the tasks of being a father. The guy is around, but he's not exactly present, vacillating between the roles of zombie and curmudgeon.

Nicky, however, is striving mightily to be a perfectly ordinary young girl -- albeit one who knits, hasn't quite yet figured out all the details of birth and is more patient with her dad's despair than a well-seasoned grief counselor. Nicky is nice to be around, but she's not wholly plausible.

Father and daughter rescue the baby, deliver the child to the nearby hospital and then settle in for what Nicky expects will be another incredibly pathetic Christmas in their clunky old house in the woods. End of story? Not quite.

A 19-year-old stranger appears at the secluded homestead as the first flakes of a blizzard begin falling, a young woman who claims to be interested in purchasing a table as a Christmas present. She faints, and it becomes clear that she is, as sentient readers will have deduced instantly, the infant's mom. The storm continues, and soon she will be snowbound in the Dillons' small house with Nicky and dad -- a situation that offers a pro like Shreve just enough dramatic possibilities to stretch out (with big print) for 300 pages. Will dad, who loathes the young mother for her role in the attempted infanticide, turn her in to the police as soon as the roads are clear? Will Nicky, who is desperate for a female role model in her life, see the older teen as someone to emulate or scorn?

Shreve has chosen to have an adult Nicky recount this tale -- a choice that remains unfathomable, given that Shreve offers no clue as to who Nicky has become as a grown-up or how this astonishing event changed her. Moreover, the older Nicky recounts that fateful December in the present tense, giving the novel a cinematic sensibility with even the smallest moments rendered with exquisite stylistic care: The result is a camera panning over a lot of knitting and beading.

But even a modest work like this -- and make no mistake, this is a small work for Shreve, a short novel between more ambitious efforts -- can offer delights in the hands of a writer this gifted. The images of Nicky's father alone with his grief or the moment when Nicky menstruates for the first time with no mother with whom to discuss it are authentic and poignant; the complex rush of emotions Nicky experiences around the infant's mom -- fear, fascination and (for a variety of reasons the novel makes clear) adoration -- is a well-drawn microcosm of adolescence. The overall result is a novel that probably won't be studied by Shreve scholars in fifty or a hundred years, but one that nevertheless offers moments that are diverting and pleasurable.

Reviewed by Chris Bohjalian
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books (September 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316010677
• ISBN-13: 978-0316010672
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (126 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #163,381 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Moving Story Of Grief, Inner Strength And Redemption., October 12, 2004

By	Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Light on Snow (Hardcover)

"Anita Shreve, a former high school teacher and prize-winning journalist, is best known as a novelist. "The Pilot's Wife," "All He Ever Wanted," "Fortunes Rocks," and "The Weight of Water," are some of her books which have absorbed and moved me. I have been looking forward to Ms. Shreve's latest offering, "Light On Snow," and the author does not disappoint with this extremely moving character study. Her astute insight into the gamut of human emotions is demonstrated in this simple story of grief and redemption. Here, two people, a father and his adolescent daughter, crippled by tragic loss, seek a semblance of their past lives in a bizarre event they literally stumble into, which impacts them both profoundly.

Nicky Dillon, now thirty, is the narrator. She reminisces back to the time she was twelve, living alone with her dad in an isolated house in the woods, just outside the town of Shepherd, NH. On a December day, near Christmastime, Robert Dillon's wife, Nicky's mother, and her baby sister, Clara, were killed in a car crash. Dillon chose Shepherd at random on his drive north with his remaining daughter, from their former home in Westchester, NY, because he could not drive on any longer. His goal was to remove himself as far as possible from society - to find a quiet place with no memories to bury his grief. Nicky, who was in terrible pain also, was faced with leaving the only home she had ever known, her friends and school, stability.

Two years later, on a cold, wintery afternoon in mid-December, Nicky and her father go for their usual late afternoon walk in the forest. The snowfall is heavy enough to make snowshoes necessary. Deep in the woods they find a newborn infant, abandoned in the snow, lying in a sleeping bag. She is wrapped in a bloody towel, umbilical cord still attached. If they had arrived at the scene a little later, the baby girl would have froze to death. Racing to the hospital they are in time to save the child. Both father and daughter are questioned by a very shrewd detective, and the police begin a search for the parents who could be charged with attempted murder, child abandonment and cruelty. Nicky, who has had to mourn alone for two years, desperately wants the baby to live with them. She wants to learn about the mother and what made her abandon her child. How could a woman make such a terrible choice?

There is a fascinating mystery here, but the novel's strength lies in the development of the characters. Twelve-year-old Nicky, on the cusp of young womanhood, is strong and very mature for her age. Perhaps it is the resilience of youth which gives her courage. She is the caretaker, the one who watches out for her father, a former architect who now takes solace in carpentry. Robert Dillon is narcissistic in his grief. By isolating himself, he forces isolation and loneliness on his daughter. Interspersed throughout the narrative are poignant memories of life with Nicky's mother and sister. Her mother will always remain young in Nicky's mind, while her sister grows up, just as she would if she were alive. At one point Nicky speaks of the small cast of characters with whom she frequently communicates - whose lives she remembers daily. "There are four of them in my little playlet: my mother who remains the same age she was when she died and who gives me bits of advice on how to handle my father; Clara, who is three and who is getting a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas; Charlotte, who will do my hair and shop with me for clothes and be my friend; and also the Baby Doris, who might be having a bottle now. Or a nap."

There is an air of listlessness, hopelessness, throughout much of the novel. But this adds to the credibility. The mood lightens eventually as outside events force change. Ms Shreve's descriptions of small town New England, many of the novel's secondary characters, and the gorgeous frozen winter landscapes are rich and detailed. "Light On Snow" is different from Anita Shreve's other novels in that it is primarily character driven. It is a very good book and I do recommend it.
JANA

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The aftermath of grief, October 12, 2004

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Light on Snow (Hardcover)

The tragic accidental death of Robert Dillon's wife and small daughter has irrevocably altered his life and left him literally staggering through the days in shock and disbelief. Twelve-year old Nicky wasn't home at the time of the accident, the effect on her as traumatic as anything yet experienced in her young life. Dillon's response is instinctive: he moves Nicky to rural New Hampshire, to a small house that is isolated from likely intrusion, effectively sealing off the family from the pain of the world.

Because of her youth, Nicky is quicker to recover, awakening after the long months of grief to find that her father simply cannot shake the depression that weighs upon him. He is barely functioning, turning out simple furniture that provides them with a meager income. They establish a few new routines, afternoon walks and make mostly unsuccessful attempts to engage as a family, albeit a broken one.

It is on one of their late afternoon walks through the darkening countryside buried in new snow, that they first hear whimpering. Finally locating the source of the cries, father and daughter discover a newborn baby, abandoned soon after its birth. After a harrowing ride to the hospital, the baby survives and the Dillon's return home, both in awe of what they have just accomplished. But while Robert ponders the kind of mother who could abandon her child, Nicky is harboring dreams of a changed family dynamic, one that includes the new baby. Robert disabuses Nicky of this idea, but a spark of rebellion has taken root in her soul.

When the baby's mother shows up on their doorstep, both father and daughter are uncomfortable, but before she can leave, Charlotte faints, still weakened by the recent birth. With a terrible storm descending upon their home, the Dillon's give shelter to the young woman. With a confused and desperate Charlotte under their roof, Robert and Nicky are confronted with the personal difficulty of making judgments of others. And Nicky is drawn to the slightly older Charlotte, seeking comfort in the womanly attentions she has not experienced since her mother's death.

Loss has taken a terrible toll on the Dillon family, but when Charlotte enters their lives, she brings a new awareness, challenging their complacency and willingness to bow to the grief that has so dominated their lives. In this small, deceptively simple story, Shreve addresses the important themes and critical choices that affect the three protagonists of Light on Snow. This intricate domestic drama is essentially a morality play; at the core of the novel is a simple theme of forgiveness and redemption. Luan Gaines/2004.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect winter read, October 12, 2004

By	Annie "bookwishes4" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Light On Snow (Large Print) (Hardcover)

Light On Snow tells the story of Nicky, a twelve year old girl, and her father Robert taking a walk in the snow one winter day only to find an abandoned baby freezing and wrapped in a bloody towel and sleeping bag. They immediately rush home to warm the baby and then take her to the hospital where she can be properly cared for. While there, the police question Robert about the incident but he is released.

Days later as a snow storm is approaching, the mother of the baby comes to their home under the false pretense of looking for furniture, which Roberts makes in his barn. She eventually admits the truth about who she is, but by then it is too late for her to leave and Robert must make the decision of whether or not to turn her in to the authorities. He does not want anything to do with her but as they are faced with time alone, she tells him her side of story and his thoughts and feelings about her begin to change.

Light On Snow is a very haunting story about the decisions we make and what consequences those decisions make on us, and others. The writing is simple to read for being such a complex story. This is the perfect book to curl up and read on a cold winters day.