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The Ice Queen
From the bestselling author of Practical Magic, a miraculous, enthralling tale of a woman who is struck by lightning, and finds her frozen heart is suddenly burning.
Be careful what you wish for. A small town librarian lives a quiet life without much excitement. One day, she mutters an idle wish and, while standing in her house, is struck by lightning. But instead of ending her life, this cataclysmic event sparks it into a new beginning.
She goes in search of Lazarus Jones, a fellow survivor who was struck dead, then simply got up and walked away. Perhaps this stranger who has seen death face to face can teach her to live without fear. When she finds him, he is her opposite, a burning man whose breath can boil water and whose touch scorches. As an obsessive love affair begins between them, both are forced to hide their most dangerous secrets—what turned one to ice and the other to fire.
A magical story of passion, loss, and renewal, The Ice Queen is Alice Hoffman at her electrifying best.
Be careful what you wish for. A small town librarian lives a quiet life without much excitement. One day, she mutters an idle wish and, while standing in her house, is struck by lightning. But instead of ending her life, this cataclysmic event sparks it into a new beginning.
She goes in search of Lazarus Jones, a fellow survivor who was struck dead, then simply got up and walked away. Perhaps this stranger who has seen death face to face can teach her to live without fear. When she finds him, he is her opposite, a burning man whose breath can boil water and whose touch scorches. As an obsessive love affair begins between them, both are forced to hide their most dangerous secrets—what turned one to ice and the other to fire.
A magical story of passion, loss, and renewal, The Ice Queen is Alice Hoffman at her electrifying best.
211 pages, Paperback
First published April 4, 2005
About the author
Alice Hoffman
124 books23.7k followersAlice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including The World That We Knew; The Marriage of Opposites; The Red Garden; The Museum of Extraordinary Things; The Dovekeepers; Here on Earth, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; and the Practical Magic series, including Practical
Magic; Magic Lessons; The Rules of Magic, a selection of Reese’s Book Club; and The Book of Magic. She lives near Boston.
Magic; Magic Lessons; The Rules of Magic, a selection of Reese’s Book Club; and The Book of Magic. She lives near Boston.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,106 reviews
May 27, 2021
The logic of fairy tales was that there was no logic: bad things happened to the innocent, children were set out in the woods by their parents, fear walked hand in hand with experience, a wish spoke aloud could make it so.I wept while reading the final chapter.
Our first-person protagonist, in a spat with Mom on Mom’s 30th birthday, wishes her dead. Mom’s demise that night defines the eight-year-old girl. She will express no love, no affection. She will listen only, go along. She embraces death, removing herself from emotional investment. Many years later, after her grandmother passes away, her brother, now a meteorologist living in Florida, persuades her to come south to live near him. In the heart of lightning country she is struck, while swatting flies inside her small home, losing the ability to see red, and is largely paralyzed on one side.
Alice Hoffman - from OrderofBooks.com
Mom’s mishap took place on an icy January night. Ice defines the girl from that point on. She remains cold, inert to the life around her. After being struck by lightning, her altered perception broadens her iciness in that it removes much from what she can even perceive of life. She sees grays where everyone else sees red. Life has literally been drained from what she can see. It is no big stretch to see her existence as bloodless.
The theme of Fairy Tales permeates the story. Lazarus Jones was also struck by lightning and the image of an old man was fused onto his skin. The protagonist believes that wishing her mother dead caused it to happen. One character wonders whether a wounded mole would grant wishes if one only saved him. Another lightning strike victim has gold fused into his skin. Magic is used in at least two ways. Magical imagery is incorporated throughout the story, and rises like a transcendent being from the death-fixation that links the entire story to a burst of life at the end. I loved it! Major recommendation.
Read – 2005
Review first posted – 2008
Published – April 2005
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal and FB pages
Other Hoffman books I have reviewed:
-----2000 - Local Girls
-----2002 - Blackbird House
-----2004 - Green Angel
-----2011 - The Red Garden
-----2011 - The Dovekeepers
-----2017 - The Rules of Magic
July 18, 2017 – New York Times – when it happens in the real world - Hit by Lightning: Tales From Survivors – by Lizette Alvarez
June 29, 2019
I think sometimes we stumble across a book that was the perfect book to read at that specific time. For whatever reason you connect to it a particularly strong way. The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman is the first book of that kind that I have read in 2019. I've finished, but I don't want to put it away yet. I found it to be very beautiful, but have to admit that I'm not sure how to convey why that was. Probably other reviews will be more helpful than this one if you are trying to decide whether or not to read this (!) but I loved it very much. I'm very glad I stumbled across this. I picked it up on a whim, which I have to say, it often the way I have found some of my favourite books.
January 17, 2023
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If you take one thing away from THE ICE QUEEN, I really want it to be that the heroine and one of her love interests have both been struck by lighting, and one of them has turned cold inside, and the other is hot (so hot his touch literally burns), and when they have sex, they have to do it in a cold bath tub. And EVEN THEN, his dick is so hot that the first time, she goes to his freezer and sticks ice UP THERE. For relief. Honestly, at least 50% of the entertainment value of this book (at least for me) was trying to figure out the rules of this weird, freaky-deaky magic-realism sex the author thought up.
Apart from that, this is a strange, surreal story that kind of reads like an adult fairytale. The heroine (who I don't think has a name) believes she has the ability to speak wishes and make them truths because when she told her mother she didn't want her to come back, her mother died. And when she said she wanted to be struck by lightning, she got struck by lightening. After those two very traumatic events, she mostly stopped talking much, but the effects of the lightening live on her blood, turning her cold, taking away her ability to see red, and leaving her with strange sensations in her head and heart.
When she ends up in a lightening strike victim study, she hears about this dude who became a total hermit after the lightning strike. This is Mr. Fire Cock, as I like to call him. He and the heroine have instant lust, although because this is ~literary fiction~ and not romance, they wait until the second meeting before having wild and screwy elemental sex, the likes of which causes water in the bathtub to literally boil and requires sticking your hands in the freezer before foreplay. Honestly, if the book was mostly about this, I would have enjoyed it SO much more. But there's a reason that this is a love story and a romance, although when people say it's unhappy, it's probably not for the reasons you think.
The last act kind of goes off the rails. This went from being a poignant, morbidly dreamy book to a depressing mess. Someone (not the love interest) dies. We learn about someone's incredibly traumatic (physical trauma from an accident, not abusive) backstory. and someone chops off their hands with a hatchet(!!!!!). Also, there's several animal deaths, small animals killed by a cat (although one of them could have been saved but the heroine didn't know that and also DO WE REALLY NEED so many gratuitous descriptions of withered animal corpses, she asked). I think I would have liked this more as a teenager when I was all about that edgy depressed emo kid life. In fact, this even came out when that subculture was nearing its peak in 2005, so maybe the author was living her edgy, depressed emo kid life, too. That said, I still actually enjoyed this book more than I did PRACTICAL MAGIC.
3.5 stars
February 22, 2020
Wow! This is quite the book to make one feel. No, FEEL! So much raw emotion and passion!
Like I'd need telling about obsessive love affairs... And not so obsessive ones.
And the everafters. And the blame game. And everything else.
Magical thinking at its best.
Q:
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. (c)
Q:
I’ve made far too many wishes in my lifetime, the first when I was eight years old. Not the sort of wish for ice cream or a party dress or long blond hair; no. The other sort, the kind that rattles your bones, then sits in the back of your throat, a greedy red toad that chokes you until you say it aloud. The kind that could change your life in an instant, before you have time to wish you could take it back. (c)
Q:
PEOPLE HIDE THEIR TRUEST NATURES. I UNderstood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves? Keep a cloak, that was fine, the thing to do; present a disguise, the outside you, the one you want people to believe. (c)
Q:
My sister-in-law was a perfect example: the sunny, near-perfect mathematician who drove through the quiet streets in her nightgown when most good people were in bed, who studied the hundred ways to die. I had already decided I wouldn’t mention the fact that I’d seen her at the book deposit. A liar like all the rest, ready to pretend I didn’t know about the crack in the reality of her life, the dark hour, the library door, the book of sorrow in her hands. (c)
Q:
Now I know the most desperate arguments are always over foolish things. The moment that changes the path of a life is the one that’s invisible, that dissolves like sugar in water. (c)
Q:
Queen of the universe. The girl who thought of no one but herself. (c)
Q:
I knew what my role was in the world. I was the quiet girl at school, the best friend, the one who came in second place. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I didn’t want to win anything. (с)
Q:
There were words I couldn’t bring myself to say; words like ruin and love and lost made me sick to my stomach. In the end, I gave them up altogether. (c)
Q:
The girl encased in ice facing the mountain. The cold silence that was so clean it didn’t hurt. For me, there was nothing beyond those mountains. Nothing worth going toward. (c)
Q:
I thought he understood I didn’t deserve kindness, or loyalty, or luck. Then one night Jack brought me flowers, a handful of fading daisies he’d picked up at a farm stand, but flowers all the same. That was the end; that was how he ruined everything. (c)
Q:
I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn’t die; she’d have to stay around to finish the books she was so fond of. (c)
Q:
My life was empty and that was fine. It was what I was used to. (c)
Q:
Before he knew it, he’d be out walking his dog and he wouldn’t even remember us, the strangers who wished the best for him, who wished he would indeed wake up. (c)
Q:
But the logic of fairy tales was that there was no logic: bad things happened to the innocent, children were set out in the woods by their parents, fear walked hand in hand with experience, a wish spoken aloud could make it so. (c)
Q:
...'A Hundred Ways to Die'... Self-help, that’s the section where it belonged. (c)
Q:
He who had no fear, who had wrestled with death and returned far stronger than he’d been before. He wanted his privacy; some people believed a man who told his secrets was a man who lost his strength, and maybe Lazarus Jones was such a man. (c)
Q:
I just made up my mind to forget about the time. What had time ever done for me? (c)
Q:
Could you walk into fear as one person and come back as someone else entirely. (c)
Q:
All I wanted was to be somebody else. Was that asking too much? Was that asking for everything? That’s why I was here. It was already happening, just by driving fifty miles. The person I’d been would have never approached a stranger’s front door and knocked, not once but three times. Once for ice. Twice for snow. Three for the tires on the road. ...
All I knew is that I wanted to fly away. I wanted to be something brand-new. I felt like those human beings in fairy tales who suddenly find themselves in another creature’s skin, trapped in sealskin, horsehide, feathers. (c)
Q:
I should have told him that the worst thing in the world is a wish that comes true. (c)
Q:
“Do you think every person has one defining secret?” ...
“Don’t you think we’re more complex than that? Don’t we all have endless secrets?”
“Little, bullshit ones. Sure. I don’t mean those. Who do you love? Who did you fuck? Everyone has them. I mean one defining secret. The essence of a person. If you figure that out, you figure out the riddle of that particular human being.” (c)
Q:
Since I didn’t believe in love, I soon enough defined my state as a delusionary preoccupation. Obsession. An emotion that should be tied up and taken out with the trash, replaced by more serious, less affecting thoughts. (c)
Q:
If Frances York had known what I was doing, I would have been fired on the spot. What people read revealed so much about them that she considered our card catalog a treasure house of privileged secrets; each card contained the map of an individual’s soul. (c)
Q:
This was a little too personal. I thought we’d speak of the weather, the heat, perhaps the student’s classwork, not the edge of the known world. (c)
Q:
ARE PEOPLE DRAWN TO EACH OTHER BECAUSE OF THE stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn’t help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They appeared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who’d lost their way, the ones who’d lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel. (c)
Q:
To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood (c)
Q:
The truth was, I didn’t want to interfere. Why should it be up to me to touch anyone’s life, guide someone right rather than left, off the road instead of on? Get involved and you made mistakes. Inevitable. Who knows where your advice, interest, love, might lead? Start and it might be impossible to stop. (c)
Q:
I felt heartbroken and I hadn’t even known I had a heart to break. (c)
Q:
That’s the danger when you come to the middle of the story. You may find out more than you ever wanted to know. (c)
Q:
This had been happiness and we didn’t know it. We walked right past. Had no idea. Step after step. (c)
Q:
... I realized I couldn’t let go; not even of this. I’d been that way all my life, holding on tight. I couldn’t let go of anything.
Except for the things that mattered most. (c)
Q:
No wonder I stayed away from kindness; in some ways it was worse than ill treatment. You could fight against cruelty, tooth and claw, but sympathy engulfed you, took you over, made you aware of all you’d done wrong. (c)
Q:
I hadn’t understood what a mystery a human being was, how many forms love could take. (c)
Q:
“They think you’re calling to them,” my brother said. “They hear it as a love song. That’s why they smack into the engines of planes. They think they’re being seduced by some huge horny bat made out of metal and then—kaboom—crushed, mashed, and decimated.”
Proof of my theory: Love destroyed you. (c)
Q:
A strange woman in the dark, all grown up, standing in the grass, under the moon, beneath a cloud of bats, crying at a funeral for a leaf, a mole, a lost love, an idea. (c)
Q:
How dangerous could a tiny shred of truth be? It had no thorns, no talons, no teeth nor tail nor sting. Truth, sleeping on the other side of what I knew. (c)
Q:
I loved him in a way that was over. A way that was the beginning of something. The sort of love that opened you up for more. (c)
Q:
This would be the moment I would never let go of, even though it caused me the greatest pain. When I was old, when I couldn’t walk or talk or see, I would still have this. (c)
Q:
This thesis was at the very center of chaos theory—if the tiniest of actions reverberated throughout the universe in invisible and unexpected ways, changing the weather and the climate, then anything was possible. (c)
Q:
The best way to die is while you’re living... Even for someone like me. You’d laugh to know how long it’s taken me to figure that out, when all I had to do was cross over the mountains. When I walk to my car in the parking lot on winter nights, I have often noticed bats, a black cloud in the darkening sky. They bring me comfort. They make me feel you’re not so far away. To think, I used to be afraid. I used to run and hide. Now I stand and look upward. I don’t mind what the weather is; the cold has never bothered me. I hope what I’m seeing is the ever after. I hope it’s you. (c)
Like I'd need telling about obsessive love affairs... And not so obsessive ones.
And the everafters. And the blame game. And everything else.
Magical thinking at its best.
Q:
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. (c)
Q:
I’ve made far too many wishes in my lifetime, the first when I was eight years old. Not the sort of wish for ice cream or a party dress or long blond hair; no. The other sort, the kind that rattles your bones, then sits in the back of your throat, a greedy red toad that chokes you until you say it aloud. The kind that could change your life in an instant, before you have time to wish you could take it back. (c)
Q:
PEOPLE HIDE THEIR TRUEST NATURES. I UNderstood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves? Keep a cloak, that was fine, the thing to do; present a disguise, the outside you, the one you want people to believe. (c)
Q:
My sister-in-law was a perfect example: the sunny, near-perfect mathematician who drove through the quiet streets in her nightgown when most good people were in bed, who studied the hundred ways to die. I had already decided I wouldn’t mention the fact that I’d seen her at the book deposit. A liar like all the rest, ready to pretend I didn’t know about the crack in the reality of her life, the dark hour, the library door, the book of sorrow in her hands. (c)
Q:
Now I know the most desperate arguments are always over foolish things. The moment that changes the path of a life is the one that’s invisible, that dissolves like sugar in water. (c)
Q:
Queen of the universe. The girl who thought of no one but herself. (c)
Q:
I knew what my role was in the world. I was the quiet girl at school, the best friend, the one who came in second place. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I didn’t want to win anything. (с)
Q:
There were words I couldn’t bring myself to say; words like ruin and love and lost made me sick to my stomach. In the end, I gave them up altogether. (c)
Q:
The girl encased in ice facing the mountain. The cold silence that was so clean it didn’t hurt. For me, there was nothing beyond those mountains. Nothing worth going toward. (c)
Q:
I thought he understood I didn’t deserve kindness, or loyalty, or luck. Then one night Jack brought me flowers, a handful of fading daisies he’d picked up at a farm stand, but flowers all the same. That was the end; that was how he ruined everything. (c)
Q:
I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn’t die; she’d have to stay around to finish the books she was so fond of. (c)
Q:
My life was empty and that was fine. It was what I was used to. (c)
Q:
Before he knew it, he’d be out walking his dog and he wouldn’t even remember us, the strangers who wished the best for him, who wished he would indeed wake up. (c)
Q:
But the logic of fairy tales was that there was no logic: bad things happened to the innocent, children were set out in the woods by their parents, fear walked hand in hand with experience, a wish spoken aloud could make it so. (c)
Q:
...'A Hundred Ways to Die'... Self-help, that’s the section where it belonged. (c)
Q:
He who had no fear, who had wrestled with death and returned far stronger than he’d been before. He wanted his privacy; some people believed a man who told his secrets was a man who lost his strength, and maybe Lazarus Jones was such a man. (c)
Q:
I just made up my mind to forget about the time. What had time ever done for me? (c)
Q:
Could you walk into fear as one person and come back as someone else entirely. (c)
Q:
All I wanted was to be somebody else. Was that asking too much? Was that asking for everything? That’s why I was here. It was already happening, just by driving fifty miles. The person I’d been would have never approached a stranger’s front door and knocked, not once but three times. Once for ice. Twice for snow. Three for the tires on the road. ...
All I knew is that I wanted to fly away. I wanted to be something brand-new. I felt like those human beings in fairy tales who suddenly find themselves in another creature’s skin, trapped in sealskin, horsehide, feathers. (c)
Q:
I should have told him that the worst thing in the world is a wish that comes true. (c)
Q:
“Do you think every person has one defining secret?” ...
“Don’t you think we’re more complex than that? Don’t we all have endless secrets?”
“Little, bullshit ones. Sure. I don’t mean those. Who do you love? Who did you fuck? Everyone has them. I mean one defining secret. The essence of a person. If you figure that out, you figure out the riddle of that particular human being.” (c)
Q:
Since I didn’t believe in love, I soon enough defined my state as a delusionary preoccupation. Obsession. An emotion that should be tied up and taken out with the trash, replaced by more serious, less affecting thoughts. (c)
Q:
If Frances York had known what I was doing, I would have been fired on the spot. What people read revealed so much about them that she considered our card catalog a treasure house of privileged secrets; each card contained the map of an individual’s soul. (c)
Q:
This was a little too personal. I thought we’d speak of the weather, the heat, perhaps the student’s classwork, not the edge of the known world. (c)
Q:
ARE PEOPLE DRAWN TO EACH OTHER BECAUSE OF THE stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn’t help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They appeared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who’d lost their way, the ones who’d lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel. (c)
Q:
To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood (c)
Q:
The truth was, I didn’t want to interfere. Why should it be up to me to touch anyone’s life, guide someone right rather than left, off the road instead of on? Get involved and you made mistakes. Inevitable. Who knows where your advice, interest, love, might lead? Start and it might be impossible to stop. (c)
Q:
I felt heartbroken and I hadn’t even known I had a heart to break. (c)
Q:
That’s the danger when you come to the middle of the story. You may find out more than you ever wanted to know. (c)
Q:
This had been happiness and we didn’t know it. We walked right past. Had no idea. Step after step. (c)
Q:
... I realized I couldn’t let go; not even of this. I’d been that way all my life, holding on tight. I couldn’t let go of anything.
Except for the things that mattered most. (c)
Q:
No wonder I stayed away from kindness; in some ways it was worse than ill treatment. You could fight against cruelty, tooth and claw, but sympathy engulfed you, took you over, made you aware of all you’d done wrong. (c)
Q:
I hadn’t understood what a mystery a human being was, how many forms love could take. (c)
Q:
“They think you’re calling to them,” my brother said. “They hear it as a love song. That’s why they smack into the engines of planes. They think they’re being seduced by some huge horny bat made out of metal and then—kaboom—crushed, mashed, and decimated.”
Proof of my theory: Love destroyed you. (c)
Q:
A strange woman in the dark, all grown up, standing in the grass, under the moon, beneath a cloud of bats, crying at a funeral for a leaf, a mole, a lost love, an idea. (c)
Q:
How dangerous could a tiny shred of truth be? It had no thorns, no talons, no teeth nor tail nor sting. Truth, sleeping on the other side of what I knew. (c)
Q:
I loved him in a way that was over. A way that was the beginning of something. The sort of love that opened you up for more. (c)
Q:
This would be the moment I would never let go of, even though it caused me the greatest pain. When I was old, when I couldn’t walk or talk or see, I would still have this. (c)
Q:
This thesis was at the very center of chaos theory—if the tiniest of actions reverberated throughout the universe in invisible and unexpected ways, changing the weather and the climate, then anything was possible. (c)
Q:
The best way to die is while you’re living... Even for someone like me. You’d laugh to know how long it’s taken me to figure that out, when all I had to do was cross over the mountains. When I walk to my car in the parking lot on winter nights, I have often noticed bats, a black cloud in the darkening sky. They bring me comfort. They make me feel you’re not so far away. To think, I used to be afraid. I used to run and hide. Now I stand and look upward. I don’t mind what the weather is; the cold has never bothered me. I hope what I’m seeing is the ever after. I hope it’s you. (c)
June 12, 2014
This is one of those books which creep up on you unawares. I had finished it months ago but it was only as I finally rejoined the GR reviewers and sat down to write this that I realized it was still reverberating gently in my mind.
It is a love story but not a straightforward one. There is an underlying theme of the need to come to terms with bitterness and self hatred. There is the recognition that gradually dawns for characters and readers alike as to how misunderstanding, misrepresentation and misreading of situations and people can cripple and maim horribly and yet it might one day only take one decent act of generous love, one seemingly insignificant show of patient understanding to transform and melt a frozen life.
The heroine, by one childish word spoken in a petulant bad temper, feels she wreaks havoc in her heart because words once spoken echo round and around and if the chamber begins to freeze then the echo bounces and rebounds and builds in strength until the whys and wherefores and even possibility of love and relationship get drowned out and the easiest way to deal with the echo is to slam the chamber shut and leave it so.
The story is the unpicking of the implications of this bolted door and uses images of lightning strikes and glacial freezes to conjure the battle undergone by those who, through unconscious choices or misunderstood acts of others, have fixed obstacles and barricades as protections and defences.
It is a genuinely moving story of rediscovery and second chances and, if it is not too over-sentimental, it is the description of the oft sneered at thought that it is never too late and that the miraculous does not necessarily mean the same to every person.
ps. As avid readers will know it is interesting how you can suddenly find a personal theme occurring over a period although only noticing it as you look back. 'The Ice Queen' began the theme of monarch butterflies which seemed to flutter gently through much of my reading in shy glimpses over these last few months. With hindsight this coincidentally was building up to my sponsored cycle across Costa Rica in early April where I encountered these beautiful creatures. Indeed for one memorable time, as I cycled along a busy main road, I was accompanied by one particularly muscular specimen powering along at my side. Sadly I was unable to stop as there was no verge so photographic evidence remains unachieved.
It is a love story but not a straightforward one. There is an underlying theme of the need to come to terms with bitterness and self hatred. There is the recognition that gradually dawns for characters and readers alike as to how misunderstanding, misrepresentation and misreading of situations and people can cripple and maim horribly and yet it might one day only take one decent act of generous love, one seemingly insignificant show of patient understanding to transform and melt a frozen life.
The heroine, by one childish word spoken in a petulant bad temper, feels she wreaks havoc in her heart because words once spoken echo round and around and if the chamber begins to freeze then the echo bounces and rebounds and builds in strength until the whys and wherefores and even possibility of love and relationship get drowned out and the easiest way to deal with the echo is to slam the chamber shut and leave it so.
The story is the unpicking of the implications of this bolted door and uses images of lightning strikes and glacial freezes to conjure the battle undergone by those who, through unconscious choices or misunderstood acts of others, have fixed obstacles and barricades as protections and defences.
It is a genuinely moving story of rediscovery and second chances and, if it is not too over-sentimental, it is the description of the oft sneered at thought that it is never too late and that the miraculous does not necessarily mean the same to every person.
ps. As avid readers will know it is interesting how you can suddenly find a personal theme occurring over a period although only noticing it as you look back. 'The Ice Queen' began the theme of monarch butterflies which seemed to flutter gently through much of my reading in shy glimpses over these last few months. With hindsight this coincidentally was building up to my sponsored cycle across Costa Rica in early April where I encountered these beautiful creatures. Indeed for one memorable time, as I cycled along a busy main road, I was accompanied by one particularly muscular specimen powering along at my side. Sadly I was unable to stop as there was no verge so photographic evidence remains unachieved.
September 5, 2023
How does one easily describe this book? Supernatural? Magical Realism? Wishful thinking becomes real?
Our main nameless narrator character as a child, was a loner. She is quiet and obsessed with Grimm’s fairy tales – specifically the darker ones.
As an adult, she moves in with her brother in Florida. He happens to be researching lightning strikes, which makes her consider what it might be like for her to be struck by lightning.
Lo and behold what should happen to her?
A lightning strikes, and, her life is forever changed, physically and spiritually.
“It was the oddest thing. It was as though I were a cloud instead of a human being. I could feel the charged atoms in the air.”
This event encourages her to go and meet other people who had also been struck by lightning.
“What’s the difference between lightning and magic? Is a joke common among meteorologists. Magic makes sense. Lightning does not, even to the experts.”
To say more would give away spoilers.
Her character evolves, and those of the people around her, it is interesting to watch the relationships develop. There was an intensity and a passion to them that really helps to add some vivid warmth, especially when the tale felt a bit bleak.
Likewise, the mystery of Lazarus’ backstory and the narrator’s intense curiosity about it helped add some compelling suspense to the story.
And…
The relationship with her brother.
The novel is filled with so many emotions. Misery. Woe. Angst. Sorrow. Fear. Self-loathing. Guilt. Darkness.
Yet...
There was humor.
And…
Statements about humanity, life, death and so much more.
There feels like the novel, even in its bleakness readers could find an underlying warmth and compassion and wisdom lurking throughout the pages.
Our nameless character is flawed, a misfit who is obsessed with death and prefers to be alone. But she is also complex and fascinating.
The other characters are quirky, flawed too, but feel real.
At its heart this is a novel about fairytales – perhaps it is even a fairytale, too.
But…
It is about the differences between what we see and what we believe – according to how we read it and how we choose to believe it – the fantasy of it – and the magic of it.
The nameless character wanted to believe so much – so she chose to seek things out – or wish things on herself – and all these things became cause and effect.
So…
Just for your own safety…
Be cautious…
And…
Beware of lightning.
Our main nameless narrator character as a child, was a loner. She is quiet and obsessed with Grimm’s fairy tales – specifically the darker ones.
As an adult, she moves in with her brother in Florida. He happens to be researching lightning strikes, which makes her consider what it might be like for her to be struck by lightning.
Lo and behold what should happen to her?
A lightning strikes, and, her life is forever changed, physically and spiritually.
“It was the oddest thing. It was as though I were a cloud instead of a human being. I could feel the charged atoms in the air.”
This event encourages her to go and meet other people who had also been struck by lightning.
“What’s the difference between lightning and magic? Is a joke common among meteorologists. Magic makes sense. Lightning does not, even to the experts.”
To say more would give away spoilers.
Her character evolves, and those of the people around her, it is interesting to watch the relationships develop. There was an intensity and a passion to them that really helps to add some vivid warmth, especially when the tale felt a bit bleak.
Likewise, the mystery of Lazarus’ backstory and the narrator’s intense curiosity about it helped add some compelling suspense to the story.
And…
The relationship with her brother.
The novel is filled with so many emotions. Misery. Woe. Angst. Sorrow. Fear. Self-loathing. Guilt. Darkness.
Yet...
There was humor.
And…
Statements about humanity, life, death and so much more.
There feels like the novel, even in its bleakness readers could find an underlying warmth and compassion and wisdom lurking throughout the pages.
Our nameless character is flawed, a misfit who is obsessed with death and prefers to be alone. But she is also complex and fascinating.
The other characters are quirky, flawed too, but feel real.
At its heart this is a novel about fairytales – perhaps it is even a fairytale, too.
But…
It is about the differences between what we see and what we believe – according to how we read it and how we choose to believe it – the fantasy of it – and the magic of it.
The nameless character wanted to believe so much – so she chose to seek things out – or wish things on herself – and all these things became cause and effect.
So…
Just for your own safety…
Be cautious…
And…
Beware of lightning.
September 13, 2018
"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 read The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman years ago but recently I stumbled across the audio version and decided to listen. I really liked reading the book but listening to this audiobook narrated by Nancy Travis was a whole different experience… different in a good way, that is.
The story begins on a cold January night… the 16th of the month, in fact. It is told in the first person so we never actually know the narrator's name. What we DO discover is on that January evening, the storyteller, an 8 year-old girl makes a wish that will forever change the course of her life. It turns out that January 16 is her mother's birthday and her mother was to meet a couple of girlfriends for a celebratory dinner. The night was rainy…. and the rain,a s it fell, had begun to freeze. Following her mother onto the porch, the girl begged her mother to stay home and braid her hair and read from her favorite book of fairy tales. When her mother simply kissed her goodbye, the wish that had been in her head quickly slipped out of her lips…. "Right away I could feel it burning. I could taste the bitterness of it; still I went ahead. I wished I would never see her again….". And the next morning, well.. the girl awoke to the news that her mother had never arrived at her birthday dinner. Her car had gone off the road and her mother was never coming home……
This young girl who had lived so much of her short life immersed in fairy tales believed in the power of wishes. She believed that her wish, made in anger and yes, selfishness caused her mother's death. And from that moment on, the ice that had covered the ground, the trees and the road her mother had driven on seemed to encapsulate her heart. She and her older brother Ned went to live with their grandmother and from the outside, their lives went on…. but the girl remained steadfast in her belief that her heart was justifiably frozen.
The story takes us through the many years of the girl's lonely life. She grows up and becomes a librarian mainly because of the isolation that position allows her. She develops an obsession with death and begins researching and reading everything she can find about all the ways there are to die. Eventually, her grandmother, with whom she had been living all these years dies and she has no idea what to do. Her brother Ned, who has become a meteorologist and has moved to Florida brings her to Florida and arranges a life for her there… a simple life as a librarian in the local library. Ned works at Orlon College where he is a consultant to physicians and neurologist who work with survivors of lightning strikes. Orlon is the 'lightning strike capital of the world' Ned tells our narrator on their way to Florida. Almost flippantly and without considering her words, she once again makes a wish.. that lightning should strike her and put an end to her pitiful life. But given her strongly held belief in the power of wishes, of course, it one day comes true. Alone in her house on a particularly hot and muggy evening, a ball of lightning no bigger than a tennis ball travels through her window and with a brilliance like that of the sun, she is struck.
Another wish comes true…. or at least it does in part. Our narrator survives the lightning strike. She finally leaves the hospital broken and damaged…. with her heart fluttering and skipping a beat, numb on one side of her body, a constant, maddening clicking sound in her head, an inability to see the color red, and a physical chill which seems to have seeped into her very bones. Attending a support group for lightening strike survivors, she learns of a man the townspeople refer to as Lazarus Jones, another lightening strike survivor who receives the name Lazarus because after being struck he had been dead (no pulse or heartbeat) for 40 minutes.. before being thrust into a bath of ice which forced him back to life. Still obsessed with death, our narrator sets out to meet this man whom she believes had faced down death. What she discovers when she find him catches her by surprise… he was her kindred spirit and yet her opposite. Whereas she felt a constant bone chilling coldness, Lazarus emanated intense heat.. able to boil water simply by breathing on it. Her coldness kept her from experiencing human touch and Lazarus radiated so much heat that he had been unable to touch anyone since he had been struck. But touch these two did, beginning an obsessive and intense love affair.. meeting again and again to immerse themselves in baths filled with frigid water. She returned home from these encounters covered with burn blisters but the pain she felt seemed finally like the proof she needed that she was actually alive. She was discovering that the ice she had encased herself in so many years before was finally being chipped away… one touch at a time. Yes, she and Lazarus were both broken and damaged people and both were closely and greedily guarding the dark secrets they held but slowly they were helping each other to come back to life… almost as if they had been in suspended animation.
I have never been a person who enjoyed reading fairy tales.. not even as a child; and although this novel is a kind of fairy tale within a fairy tale, I was amazed by the imagery Alice Hoffman utilized in this story. Mainly, Ms. Hoffman cleverly made use of imagery created by the magnificent power of nature. I could FEEL the pinpricks of the ice on the narrator's young bare feet as she hurried onto the frozen front porch after her mother. I could SEE the brilliance of the ball of lightning which entered her window, blinding her before striking. I felt chilled as I imagined her sad little girl's heart encased in ice… an ice which kept her figuratively imprisoned in suspended animation for many, many years. I loved Ms. Hoffman's use of the frightening power of lightning.. its incredible power when its heat and energy both infuse the earth with necessary nitrogen which enriches the soil so that the earth's inhabitants may find nourishment; but at the same time having the capability to destroy everything it touches, even stopping the heart of a human being.
But I think what I loved most about this novel is its message of redemption and second chances. There is a school of thought which espouses that human beings create everything they experience in the world through the power of their thoughts… whatever you think, is what you experience. I don't know that I believe that even if it IS interesting to think about. But I thought about that 'philosophy' while listening to this story and I couldn't help but hope that the universe, in all of its infinite capacity to inflict harshness on its inhabitants, wouldn't be so cruel as to punish a young girl who uttered thoughtlessly and perhaps selfishly a wish without truly understanding the consequences of that wish. This story was also about guilt and the everlasting self-loathing that that seems to flow from feeling a guilt that you can never hope to eliminate because for whatever the reason, there is no chance of ever asking for forgiveness. This story shows that the magical powers of connections formed between human beings can transform and transcend the power of even the most ferocious forces of nature… including our own guilt and grief.
I highly recommend listening to the audio version of this book. I found that listening enhanced my appreciation of the imagery displayed within this beautiful story.
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 read The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman years ago but recently I stumbled across the audio version and decided to listen. I really liked reading the book but listening to this audiobook narrated by Nancy Travis was a whole different experience… different in a good way, that is.
The story begins on a cold January night… the 16th of the month, in fact. It is told in the first person so we never actually know the narrator's name. What we DO discover is on that January evening, the storyteller, an 8 year-old girl makes a wish that will forever change the course of her life. It turns out that January 16 is her mother's birthday and her mother was to meet a couple of girlfriends for a celebratory dinner. The night was rainy…. and the rain,a s it fell, had begun to freeze. Following her mother onto the porch, the girl begged her mother to stay home and braid her hair and read from her favorite book of fairy tales. When her mother simply kissed her goodbye, the wish that had been in her head quickly slipped out of her lips…. "Right away I could feel it burning. I could taste the bitterness of it; still I went ahead. I wished I would never see her again….". And the next morning, well.. the girl awoke to the news that her mother had never arrived at her birthday dinner. Her car had gone off the road and her mother was never coming home……
This young girl who had lived so much of her short life immersed in fairy tales believed in the power of wishes. She believed that her wish, made in anger and yes, selfishness caused her mother's death. And from that moment on, the ice that had covered the ground, the trees and the road her mother had driven on seemed to encapsulate her heart. She and her older brother Ned went to live with their grandmother and from the outside, their lives went on…. but the girl remained steadfast in her belief that her heart was justifiably frozen.
The story takes us through the many years of the girl's lonely life. She grows up and becomes a librarian mainly because of the isolation that position allows her. She develops an obsession with death and begins researching and reading everything she can find about all the ways there are to die. Eventually, her grandmother, with whom she had been living all these years dies and she has no idea what to do. Her brother Ned, who has become a meteorologist and has moved to Florida brings her to Florida and arranges a life for her there… a simple life as a librarian in the local library. Ned works at Orlon College where he is a consultant to physicians and neurologist who work with survivors of lightning strikes. Orlon is the 'lightning strike capital of the world' Ned tells our narrator on their way to Florida. Almost flippantly and without considering her words, she once again makes a wish.. that lightning should strike her and put an end to her pitiful life. But given her strongly held belief in the power of wishes, of course, it one day comes true. Alone in her house on a particularly hot and muggy evening, a ball of lightning no bigger than a tennis ball travels through her window and with a brilliance like that of the sun, she is struck.
Another wish comes true…. or at least it does in part. Our narrator survives the lightning strike. She finally leaves the hospital broken and damaged…. with her heart fluttering and skipping a beat, numb on one side of her body, a constant, maddening clicking sound in her head, an inability to see the color red, and a physical chill which seems to have seeped into her very bones. Attending a support group for lightening strike survivors, she learns of a man the townspeople refer to as Lazarus Jones, another lightening strike survivor who receives the name Lazarus because after being struck he had been dead (no pulse or heartbeat) for 40 minutes.. before being thrust into a bath of ice which forced him back to life. Still obsessed with death, our narrator sets out to meet this man whom she believes had faced down death. What she discovers when she find him catches her by surprise… he was her kindred spirit and yet her opposite. Whereas she felt a constant bone chilling coldness, Lazarus emanated intense heat.. able to boil water simply by breathing on it. Her coldness kept her from experiencing human touch and Lazarus radiated so much heat that he had been unable to touch anyone since he had been struck. But touch these two did, beginning an obsessive and intense love affair.. meeting again and again to immerse themselves in baths filled with frigid water. She returned home from these encounters covered with burn blisters but the pain she felt seemed finally like the proof she needed that she was actually alive. She was discovering that the ice she had encased herself in so many years before was finally being chipped away… one touch at a time. Yes, she and Lazarus were both broken and damaged people and both were closely and greedily guarding the dark secrets they held but slowly they were helping each other to come back to life… almost as if they had been in suspended animation.
I have never been a person who enjoyed reading fairy tales.. not even as a child; and although this novel is a kind of fairy tale within a fairy tale, I was amazed by the imagery Alice Hoffman utilized in this story. Mainly, Ms. Hoffman cleverly made use of imagery created by the magnificent power of nature. I could FEEL the pinpricks of the ice on the narrator's young bare feet as she hurried onto the frozen front porch after her mother. I could SEE the brilliance of the ball of lightning which entered her window, blinding her before striking. I felt chilled as I imagined her sad little girl's heart encased in ice… an ice which kept her figuratively imprisoned in suspended animation for many, many years. I loved Ms. Hoffman's use of the frightening power of lightning.. its incredible power when its heat and energy both infuse the earth with necessary nitrogen which enriches the soil so that the earth's inhabitants may find nourishment; but at the same time having the capability to destroy everything it touches, even stopping the heart of a human being.
But I think what I loved most about this novel is its message of redemption and second chances. There is a school of thought which espouses that human beings create everything they experience in the world through the power of their thoughts… whatever you think, is what you experience. I don't know that I believe that even if it IS interesting to think about. But I thought about that 'philosophy' while listening to this story and I couldn't help but hope that the universe, in all of its infinite capacity to inflict harshness on its inhabitants, wouldn't be so cruel as to punish a young girl who uttered thoughtlessly and perhaps selfishly a wish without truly understanding the consequences of that wish. This story was also about guilt and the everlasting self-loathing that that seems to flow from feeling a guilt that you can never hope to eliminate because for whatever the reason, there is no chance of ever asking for forgiveness. This story shows that the magical powers of connections formed between human beings can transform and transcend the power of even the most ferocious forces of nature… including our own guilt and grief.
I highly recommend listening to the audio version of this book. I found that listening enhanced my appreciation of the imagery displayed within this beautiful story.
August 27, 2016
I think we've all been asked a thousand times about our favorite books. I've always found it hard to answer and so I would mention my favorite authors instead. But then I found this book. I don't really know what happened... I think it was love at first sight. This is one of those books in which every single word matters. I know that's supposed to happen in every single novel but this book is different... each word is a precious piece in the brilliantly built puzzle that is this story. The emotions, so raw, so beautiful, so real... It's actually hard for me to put in words what I felt while and after reading it. This is a love story... between two people, between family members, yes, but also between life and death. The fear so well known yet so well hidden by us plays an amazing role in this story and helps the novel reach out for the reader. The writing is magnificent and so meaningful that at times hurts.
I borrowed this book from my sister's collection but am now going to get myself a copy. I want to be able to read and re-read it until I know every word by heart.
I borrowed this book from my sister's collection but am now going to get myself a copy. I want to be able to read and re-read it until I know every word by heart.
January 17, 2024
Magical realism, magical occurrences in everyday life to make the extraordinary out of the mundane. On gray, frigid winter days without end I crave magic in any form possible. When I go back through my reading tendencies, I notice that I have read many books by authors known for their magical realism during the month of January. Tables communicating with the dead, women followed by a trail of snow, and birds who are familiars are just a few instances that have occurred in my favorite books in this genre. My favorite series in the genre is by far Practical Magic featuring the Owens family. Now that the series is complete, I decided to go back and read Alice Hoffman’s books that I might have missed over the years. As it is January, a least favorite month of both mine and the characters in this book, I decided it was time for a book featuring an ice queen.
Red hair, the mark of a witch. Our eight year old protagonist wears her long red hair in a braid and devours fairy tales like they are water. Throughout the book, this practical, introspective character goes unnamed. Early, we find out that she and her older brother Ned are products of a one parent house. Their mother detests January in New Jersey as much as I abhor January in the Midwest. I can relate although not to the extent that the narrator’s mother does. On the eve of her thirtieth birthday the mother plans to go out with friends to celebrate. Her children are visibly upset, so the protagonist wishes for the equivalent of a broken heart. The two siblings spend the night reading fairy tales, Ned’s favorite being Dr Death, the protagonist’s being Anderson’s the Snow Queen (think Elsa in her ice palace on the cusp of belting out Let it Go). The mom does not return, the protagonist blames herself and cuts off her braid, and the siblings are raised by their grandmother. Both choose jobs suited for their personalities: Ned a meteorologist who tries to outwit nature and his sister a reference librarian. She becomes everyone’s confidant because she is safely anonymous to all. Other than her cat named for fairytale character Giselle, she is friendless by choice.
According to Ned’s beloved chaos theory, if a butterfly beats its wings in a forest, the event creates a chain that affects the entire world. After Ned becomes a leading researcher at Orlon University in central Florida, the protagonist remains in New Jersey to take care of their aging grandmother. Once the grandmother passes, this girl with a stone in her heart and deep secret has nothing to live for. Ned brings her to Florida to become the librarian at the rundown town library, and at once she becomes an anonymous confidant to a new set of people. With her brother keeping an eye on her and her cat taking to Florida like a fish to water, our protagonist can live quietly without being beholdent on another human soul, that is until she is struck by lightening. One reason why Ned selected Orlon is for its lightening strike victim research. He is the head of the study and forces his sister to take part against her judgement. Like the butterfly beating its wings, the effects of the research study are psychologically and physically life altering for all involved. This is where magical realism takes over the bulk of the book’s narrative.
For those who grew up on Back to the Future movies, we know that a bolt of lightning is one point twenty one gigawatts. Surviving a strike is slim to none yet in Orlon, Florida there resides a large cross-section of strike survivors who become part of the study. The protagonist becomes color blind and can no longer see the color red. Her breath comes out as ice even in the heat and humidity of Florida as she believes that this is penance for her childhood wish coming through. The other victims have their own magic marking them as victims: a college student with gold embedded in his hands, a man in Jacksonville who came back from the dead twice and breathes fire, and Lazarus Jones who also comes back from the dead and bears the mark of a not so fortunate victim on his back. The contrast between ice and fire, colorless and the vibrancy of Florida’s flora and fauna are strikingly obvious. For one who loves magical realism as much as I do, some of these occurrences seem a bit far fetched. As this was published before any of the prequels and sequels to the Owens’ saga, the narrative revealed her plotting ideas for future books and running them by her readers. Some worked and some were out of place, including a witch with red hair who would either drown or survive and be later marked as a witch. If this is going to be used in future books, save it for them. Animals as familiars also felt eerily like foreshadowing, but Giselle, whose purpose was to comfort her human caretaker, became my favorite character in the book, more so than the humans who were for the most part devoid of love.
From Frozen, we know that love melts a broken heart. Selfless acts in both Anderson’s fairy tale and this book that could have been a modern telling of the tale, allowed this to occur. Until I can call myself a Florida resident, I will also detesr January. The month is long and draggy and cold, and I pine for the warmth of the beach. On a winters day, I can warm myself with the joy of magical realism books. Even though this isn’t the best of Hoffman’s work it still fit the bill of inmersing myself in a semi-magical world in order to forget the drabness of winter. The Ice Queen doesn’t match the witchy world of the Owens’ but then again nothing does. I will continue to reach for magical realism books on the grayest days of the year to brighten my mood.
⚡️ 3.5 stars rounded to 4 ⚡️
Red hair, the mark of a witch. Our eight year old protagonist wears her long red hair in a braid and devours fairy tales like they are water. Throughout the book, this practical, introspective character goes unnamed. Early, we find out that she and her older brother Ned are products of a one parent house. Their mother detests January in New Jersey as much as I abhor January in the Midwest. I can relate although not to the extent that the narrator’s mother does. On the eve of her thirtieth birthday the mother plans to go out with friends to celebrate. Her children are visibly upset, so the protagonist wishes for the equivalent of a broken heart. The two siblings spend the night reading fairy tales, Ned’s favorite being Dr Death, the protagonist’s being Anderson’s the Snow Queen (think Elsa in her ice palace on the cusp of belting out Let it Go). The mom does not return, the protagonist blames herself and cuts off her braid, and the siblings are raised by their grandmother. Both choose jobs suited for their personalities: Ned a meteorologist who tries to outwit nature and his sister a reference librarian. She becomes everyone’s confidant because she is safely anonymous to all. Other than her cat named for fairytale character Giselle, she is friendless by choice.
According to Ned’s beloved chaos theory, if a butterfly beats its wings in a forest, the event creates a chain that affects the entire world. After Ned becomes a leading researcher at Orlon University in central Florida, the protagonist remains in New Jersey to take care of their aging grandmother. Once the grandmother passes, this girl with a stone in her heart and deep secret has nothing to live for. Ned brings her to Florida to become the librarian at the rundown town library, and at once she becomes an anonymous confidant to a new set of people. With her brother keeping an eye on her and her cat taking to Florida like a fish to water, our protagonist can live quietly without being beholdent on another human soul, that is until she is struck by lightening. One reason why Ned selected Orlon is for its lightening strike victim research. He is the head of the study and forces his sister to take part against her judgement. Like the butterfly beating its wings, the effects of the research study are psychologically and physically life altering for all involved. This is where magical realism takes over the bulk of the book’s narrative.
For those who grew up on Back to the Future movies, we know that a bolt of lightning is one point twenty one gigawatts. Surviving a strike is slim to none yet in Orlon, Florida there resides a large cross-section of strike survivors who become part of the study. The protagonist becomes color blind and can no longer see the color red. Her breath comes out as ice even in the heat and humidity of Florida as she believes that this is penance for her childhood wish coming through. The other victims have their own magic marking them as victims: a college student with gold embedded in his hands, a man in Jacksonville who came back from the dead twice and breathes fire, and Lazarus Jones who also comes back from the dead and bears the mark of a not so fortunate victim on his back. The contrast between ice and fire, colorless and the vibrancy of Florida’s flora and fauna are strikingly obvious. For one who loves magical realism as much as I do, some of these occurrences seem a bit far fetched. As this was published before any of the prequels and sequels to the Owens’ saga, the narrative revealed her plotting ideas for future books and running them by her readers. Some worked and some were out of place, including a witch with red hair who would either drown or survive and be later marked as a witch. If this is going to be used in future books, save it for them. Animals as familiars also felt eerily like foreshadowing, but Giselle, whose purpose was to comfort her human caretaker, became my favorite character in the book, more so than the humans who were for the most part devoid of love.
From Frozen, we know that love melts a broken heart. Selfless acts in both Anderson’s fairy tale and this book that could have been a modern telling of the tale, allowed this to occur. Until I can call myself a Florida resident, I will also detesr January. The month is long and draggy and cold, and I pine for the warmth of the beach. On a winters day, I can warm myself with the joy of magical realism books. Even though this isn’t the best of Hoffman’s work it still fit the bill of inmersing myself in a semi-magical world in order to forget the drabness of winter. The Ice Queen doesn’t match the witchy world of the Owens’ but then again nothing does. I will continue to reach for magical realism books on the grayest days of the year to brighten my mood.
⚡️ 3.5 stars rounded to 4 ⚡️
April 11, 2015
If you too are slogging through this and think the author may be just a wee bit too enamored with her love for metaphor and symbols, and you think the main character is not sympathetic, but kind of a pitiable loser, then you're thinking as I did through almost the first 3/4 of this wonderful and touching novel. I write the above because if you're tempted to abandon the book before you get to the end (as I did), you'll be cheating yourself out of an amazing, meaningful, and completely touching personal journey that will totally bring you to tears. Sometimes, you have to stick with a book, as you might stick with a precocious but bratty child, to come out rewarded on the other side. THE ICE QUEEN is like that.
February 21, 2019
This is an adult magical realism standalone fantasy novel.
So the story follows a nameless character who is a woman obsessed with death. .
As a young girl, she was really self centered. One day, she gets mad at her mom as she is driving away. In a moment of fury, she wishes her mom dead. The next day, the young girl wakes up to find that her mom was killed in a car accident. Her wish had come true.
Later in the story, the girl moves to Florida with her brother. The woman was fascinated by lightning. So fascinated that she wonders what it would be like to be struck by it. And as she wishes that out loud she gets struck by lightning.
The women can no longer see red after she is struck. She is also constantly cold and she begins to refer to herself as an ice queen because she can no longer feel.
Then she meets Lazarus. A man who was struck by lightning, died, and then came back to life. She is fascinated by him. An odd romance develops between the narrator and Lazarus.
There is more to this story but I will not spoil it for you. Go find it and read it.
This story was like a roller-coaster ride for me. It had its own pros and cons. I sometimes felt like I was really enjoying the story and sometimes it felt like meh.
So the story follows a nameless character who is a woman obsessed with death. .
As a young girl, she was really self centered. One day, she gets mad at her mom as she is driving away. In a moment of fury, she wishes her mom dead. The next day, the young girl wakes up to find that her mom was killed in a car accident. Her wish had come true.
Later in the story, the girl moves to Florida with her brother. The woman was fascinated by lightning. So fascinated that she wonders what it would be like to be struck by it. And as she wishes that out loud she gets struck by lightning.
The women can no longer see red after she is struck. She is also constantly cold and she begins to refer to herself as an ice queen because she can no longer feel.
Then she meets Lazarus. A man who was struck by lightning, died, and then came back to life. She is fascinated by him. An odd romance develops between the narrator and Lazarus.
There is more to this story but I will not spoil it for you. Go find it and read it.
This story was like a roller-coaster ride for me. It had its own pros and cons. I sometimes felt like I was really enjoying the story and sometimes it felt like meh.
April 21, 2015
4.4 stars
This book ripped my heart out then threw it against the wall only to pick it up, stomp and kick at it with steel toed boots.
In the misery, the bleakness and the dark hole that became my chest there was a light weak but bright. The author was able to keep me focused on that little light, it wasn't hope of a HEA it was much deeper it was the spark of life to breath to continue. Her words are beautifully sewn together, visual and emotionally charged.
Depressing stories are my kryptonite normally I would have dropped this after the first chapter but I couldn't put it down. Would I ever read it again ? Hell no, I'll never forget it. It was so beautifully sad and haunting.
This book ripped my heart out then threw it against the wall only to pick it up, stomp and kick at it with steel toed boots.
In the misery, the bleakness and the dark hole that became my chest there was a light weak but bright. The author was able to keep me focused on that little light, it wasn't hope of a HEA it was much deeper it was the spark of life to breath to continue. Her words are beautifully sewn together, visual and emotionally charged.
Depressing stories are my kryptonite normally I would have dropped this after the first chapter but I couldn't put it down. Would I ever read it again ? Hell no, I'll never forget it. It was so beautifully sad and haunting.
November 9, 2009
When I worked in publishing, I would often read books just out of curiosity about what the author's style was like, or what drew their fans in. One author I was familiar with, but never read, was Alice Hoffman. I recently read The Ice Queen, which is about a librarian, so hey, why not.
The protagonist loses her mother at age 8, for which she blames herself. She grows up into a sort of nonperson, with no friends, only a lover whom she keeps at arm's length. After the death of their grandmother, her brother moves her to his town in Florida, but shortly after arriving, she is struck by lightning. Her perception of the world around her changes, she begins to notice elements of magic around her, and she develops new relationships. After being frozen by her mother's death, the fire of the lightning strike eventually turns her into a real person.
This is the kind of midlist book that is exactly clever enough to sustain one reading club session, but no more. For example, after the lightning strike the nameless protagonist loses the ability to see the color red (she sees it, nonsensically, as white). She embarks on a torrid love affair, which has no effect on her, but when she seals a real friendship, suddenly she can see red again. Gee, I wonder what that means.
I found myself irritated by the implausibility of the details. The protagonist's brother is supposed to be a meteorologist but he gives a paper on fairy tales and chaos theory (I don't think Hoffman knows what this is) at a meteorology conference and is received with a standing ovation. I don't go to a lot of meteorology conferences, but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't happen. One character is supposed to be majoring in architecture, which involves building models of Greek temples, like in the seventh grade. And the library stuff! Ugh!
The protagonist loses her mother at age 8, for which she blames herself. She grows up into a sort of nonperson, with no friends, only a lover whom she keeps at arm's length. After the death of their grandmother, her brother moves her to his town in Florida, but shortly after arriving, she is struck by lightning. Her perception of the world around her changes, she begins to notice elements of magic around her, and she develops new relationships. After being frozen by her mother's death, the fire of the lightning strike eventually turns her into a real person.
This is the kind of midlist book that is exactly clever enough to sustain one reading club session, but no more. For example, after the lightning strike the nameless protagonist loses the ability to see the color red (she sees it, nonsensically, as white). She embarks on a torrid love affair, which has no effect on her, but when she seals a real friendship, suddenly she can see red again. Gee, I wonder what that means.
I found myself irritated by the implausibility of the details. The protagonist's brother is supposed to be a meteorologist but he gives a paper on fairy tales and chaos theory (I don't think Hoffman knows what this is) at a meteorology conference and is received with a standing ovation. I don't go to a lot of meteorology conferences, but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't happen. One character is supposed to be majoring in architecture, which involves building models of Greek temples, like in the seventh grade. And the library stuff! Ugh!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 19, 2018
3.5 stars rounded up.
It took me a while to get into this book. It is ostensibly about characters who have survived lightning strikes and how they cope with life afterwards, but it is more about how people deal with their emotional scars and facing their mortality. The book is populated with some very damaged characters, each in interesting ways. When two of the more damaged characters enter into a relationship, there are unintended consequences for more than just the two of them.
The book has some interesting twists in it, and once I got past the initial parts that dragged a bit for me, it became a compelling read.
In typical Alice Hoffman fashion, this book has some magical aspects to it that add a wondrous element to the story. In the end I enjoyed it more than I expected to, which is always a happy experience.
It took me a while to get into this book. It is ostensibly about characters who have survived lightning strikes and how they cope with life afterwards, but it is more about how people deal with their emotional scars and facing their mortality. The book is populated with some very damaged characters, each in interesting ways. When two of the more damaged characters enter into a relationship, there are unintended consequences for more than just the two of them.
The book has some interesting twists in it, and once I got past the initial parts that dragged a bit for me, it became a compelling read.
In typical Alice Hoffman fashion, this book has some magical aspects to it that add a wondrous element to the story. In the end I enjoyed it more than I expected to, which is always a happy experience.
March 22, 2012
Exquisite, I really love Alice Hoffman's writing, all that magic, beauty and love she puts into it makes it something to savor. We have to deal with a significant amount of pain in this one as well, as a little girl who is burdened with the guilt of believing that she has caused her mother's death begins the process of learning to feel again through the cataclysmic event of getting hit by lightening when she is an adult. Weather often plays a large part of Alice Hoffman's stories, it really is a magic phenomenon, and this story is no exception. I have lived in Florida and Alice describes Florida's weather so well. As she says, "no outsider could be prepared for Florida." Getting hit by lightening, ah what a terrible thing! And it is so random, in a world where we persist in thinking that if we do things right then the bad things won't happen to us. Sometimes what we think is bad though turns out for the good, and our control is illusory anyway.
November 25, 2015
This book made me realise that I do believe in magic as a real thing. The "magical realism" part of it didn't seem fictional to me.
Hoffman intersperses a lot of philosophical musings about self-identity and value throughout this story. It's a reflection of the fairy tales she references in the book, full of a melancholy darkness that ends well despite the cost. It's the journey of someone who thinks she did something unforgivable to her self-acceptance upon realising that she can't control everything. Or anything.
It is so well written that I had to notate several quotes. And most interesting about Hoffman's writing, for me, is how much she says without saying it. It's like she writes a box around a feeling or a occurrence and frames it without ever really touching it directly.
"A stranger in his own life."
"I'd always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood."
"Keep a cloak, that was fine, the thing to do; present a disguise, the outside you, the one you want people to believe."
"The truth was, I didn't want to interfere. Why should it be up to me to touch anyone's life, guide someone right rather than left, off the road instead of on? Get involved and you made mistakes. Inevitable. Who knows where our advice, interest, love might lead? Start and it might be impossible to stop."
"Because what someone reads in a library is nobody else's business."
"I didn't want to get to know him, or the other one, the young woman. I didn't have any space for anything more than I was already carrying."
And from Hoffman in an interview, regarding writing:
"It's the dream that goes where the real you wouldn't go."
Hoffman intersperses a lot of philosophical musings about self-identity and value throughout this story. It's a reflection of the fairy tales she references in the book, full of a melancholy darkness that ends well despite the cost. It's the journey of someone who thinks she did something unforgivable to her self-acceptance upon realising that she can't control everything. Or anything.
It is so well written that I had to notate several quotes. And most interesting about Hoffman's writing, for me, is how much she says without saying it. It's like she writes a box around a feeling or a occurrence and frames it without ever really touching it directly.
"A stranger in his own life."
"I'd always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood."
"Keep a cloak, that was fine, the thing to do; present a disguise, the outside you, the one you want people to believe."
"The truth was, I didn't want to interfere. Why should it be up to me to touch anyone's life, guide someone right rather than left, off the road instead of on? Get involved and you made mistakes. Inevitable. Who knows where our advice, interest, love might lead? Start and it might be impossible to stop."
"Because what someone reads in a library is nobody else's business."
"I didn't want to get to know him, or the other one, the young woman. I didn't have any space for anything more than I was already carrying."
And from Hoffman in an interview, regarding writing:
"It's the dream that goes where the real you wouldn't go."
August 21, 2023
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but don't all stories begin this way?
Practical Magic has to be my all-time favourite comfort watch - but this is my first Alice Hoffman. Maybe now I'll finally read that? Either way, I'm glad I read The Ice Queen; it was beautiful, sad and emotional, but beautiful. Even the language made it a thing of joy to read, even as the content tugged my heartstrings.
This book sticks much closer to the realism side of magical realism; our narrator survives a lightning strike, and the experiences she and her fellow survivors go through is the closest thing to magic in the book. It's tied back to the possibility of magic, though, and that is hinted at in far more places than just lightning - it's in chaos theory, wishes, and death.
I don't normally enjoy emotional rollercoasters, but there's a little bit of magic in Alice Hoffman's writing, too, that made this work for me.
Practical Magic has to be my all-time favourite comfort watch - but this is my first Alice Hoffman. Maybe now I'll finally read that? Either way, I'm glad I read The Ice Queen; it was beautiful, sad and emotional, but beautiful. Even the language made it a thing of joy to read, even as the content tugged my heartstrings.
This book sticks much closer to the realism side of magical realism; our narrator survives a lightning strike, and the experiences she and her fellow survivors go through is the closest thing to magic in the book. It's tied back to the possibility of magic, though, and that is hinted at in far more places than just lightning - it's in chaos theory, wishes, and death.
I don't normally enjoy emotional rollercoasters, but there's a little bit of magic in Alice Hoffman's writing, too, that made this work for me.
December 5, 2024
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..
This story reminds me of the book, The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham. It is about a woman who was struck by tragedy when she was younger. She is convinced that she has the power to bring bad things into her life and those around her just by her thoughts and wishes.
It is a story of self-discovery, family, and figuring out how to survive when your circumstances are less than ideal.
I love Alice Hoffman's writing style. This is not one of my favorite books by her, but it is still a solid read.
This story reminds me of the book, The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham. It is about a woman who was struck by tragedy when she was younger. She is convinced that she has the power to bring bad things into her life and those around her just by her thoughts and wishes.
It is a story of self-discovery, family, and figuring out how to survive when your circumstances are less than ideal.
I love Alice Hoffman's writing style. This is not one of my favorite books by her, but it is still a solid read.
November 27, 2008
I loathed this book. According to a snippet from a "Times" review on the front cover, it is meant to be a wonderfully erotic love story. It is neither erotic nor a wonderful love story as far as I'm concerned !
The main character is a bitter and twisted librarian. She has good reasons for being bitter and twisted. That I don't mind. However her main love interest, Lazarus Jones, is so thinly drawn, that I had zilch interest in the love story.
The story is part fantasy (a fairy tale), which would be OK except that there is no "internal logic". For instance, Lazarus Jones has a very unusual lightening strike side affect: his body is extremely hot. In fact so hot, you can't imagine how the the heroine and he could have had sexual relations without her ending up in a burns unit, and yet she seems to get by without too many difficulties.
Maybe some readers just accept this rot and run with it, but I just couldn't suspend disbelief.
A lot of the writing is cliched and just plain silly.
A friend recommended this book to me as she knows I'm an Alice Munroe fan. I've also read that if you like one of these authors you're sure to like the other. I don't understand why (both North American authors who write about women who share the same given name??). Alice Munroe is a fine writer, while AH just writes drivel as far as I can see (based on the reading of two books).
The main character is a bitter and twisted librarian. She has good reasons for being bitter and twisted. That I don't mind. However her main love interest, Lazarus Jones, is so thinly drawn, that I had zilch interest in the love story.
The story is part fantasy (a fairy tale), which would be OK except that there is no "internal logic". For instance, Lazarus Jones has a very unusual lightening strike side affect: his body is extremely hot. In fact so hot, you can't imagine how the the heroine and he could have had sexual relations without her ending up in a burns unit, and yet she seems to get by without too many difficulties.
Maybe some readers just accept this rot and run with it, but I just couldn't suspend disbelief.
A lot of the writing is cliched and just plain silly.
A friend recommended this book to me as she knows I'm an Alice Munroe fan. I've also read that if you like one of these authors you're sure to like the other. I don't understand why (both North American authors who write about women who share the same given name??). Alice Munroe is a fine writer, while AH just writes drivel as far as I can see (based on the reading of two books).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 4, 2018
3.5... I read some of the reviews and I agree with the likes and dislikes. Overall it was interesting and good. Was a bit repetitive and I skimmed a few pages but I like the authors way of seeing things. It was an unexpected love story.
November 26, 2023
Wow! My first Alice Hoffman read and certainly won't be my last. I wasn't expecting to like this one this much as it is not my genre of preference.
May 17, 2007
If I could, I'd give this a firm 3 & 1/2 stars because I'm not sure I loved it but I more than liked it. I like/love most of her books. I like fairy tales and this book was full of fairy tale references - the story itself is really a fairy tale. It is short and it is a quick read. I had great trouble warming to most of the main characters but this was meant to be. The last pages made me cry because, in the end, I really felt for those same characters. Any book that elicits tears deserves, I've decided, the full 4 stars. One small problem I had with the copy I read - someone made the bad decision to put a review on the cover that included the comment "An electrifying novel" .... a great deal of the story involves survivers of lightning strikes so this was either a very bad joke or it was not intentional - someone at the publishers should have caught this because bad joke or unintentional, it was wrong.
August 6, 2015
How does one go from giving three stars to a Booker prize winner to giving this inconsequential book a four star rating?
First, tell a story well. Second, describe everything vividly and throw in a little wisdom. Third, be the kind of book one is looking for. I was looking for a page-turning escape and I got it.
Being the bearer of two “I wish you’d die” wishes coming true, the nameless narrator grows up fearful of and fascinated by death, obtaining knowledge that is tapped into by a local police detective. She refrains from intimacy and closes her heart to the world. Thankfully, her four years older brother provides security in home and employment in their adult years for her psychological state teeters on the edge.
When she is struck by a lightning ball her focus of fascination shifts to lightning survivors who have died and come back to life, due in part to her participation in a study her brother is leading at a Florida university. And it is through other survivors that she is able to recover from her traumas and accept both life and death.
It is winter and ice in New Jersey when her mother dies and summer and heat in Florida when she has her affair with Lazarus Jones, a lightning strike survivor. She is ice, he is fire. Their lovemaking is pure trashy magical realism.
Hoffman has some surprising and brilliant denouements in the book, so to say more would likely spoil the fun. Be forewarned, this book is a bit of Highlander romance and a little more depth could have been added here and there to raise its literary value. There are, however, a number of themes running through it and enough food for thought for me to recommend it to the right readers.
First, tell a story well. Second, describe everything vividly and throw in a little wisdom. Third, be the kind of book one is looking for. I was looking for a page-turning escape and I got it.
Being the bearer of two “I wish you’d die” wishes coming true, the nameless narrator grows up fearful of and fascinated by death, obtaining knowledge that is tapped into by a local police detective. She refrains from intimacy and closes her heart to the world. Thankfully, her four years older brother provides security in home and employment in their adult years for her psychological state teeters on the edge.
When she is struck by a lightning ball her focus of fascination shifts to lightning survivors who have died and come back to life, due in part to her participation in a study her brother is leading at a Florida university. And it is through other survivors that she is able to recover from her traumas and accept both life and death.
It is winter and ice in New Jersey when her mother dies and summer and heat in Florida when she has her affair with Lazarus Jones, a lightning strike survivor. She is ice, he is fire. Their lovemaking is pure trashy magical realism.
Hoffman has some surprising and brilliant denouements in the book, so to say more would likely spoil the fun. Be forewarned, this book is a bit of Highlander romance and a little more depth could have been added here and there to raise its literary value. There are, however, a number of themes running through it and enough food for thought for me to recommend it to the right readers.
September 12, 2022
After reading the first thirty pages of this book I had to check and make sure that this was the same Alice Hoffman whose previous eight or nine books I have read were simply wonderful. It was the same Alice Hoffman and the first thirty pages might not have lived up to what I expected, but the next 180 pages were pure magic, pure Ms. Hoffman.
This book is about many things: the uncertainty of life and how a group of people had their entire lives and careers changed because they were unlucky enough to be struck by powerful lightning. It's about family and the importance of friendships and the respect the simplest creatures, moles, deserve and should not so easily be discarded and killed. It's about love, and it reminds us that the way we deal with death is by living.
This in not "The Dovekeepers," nor "The World That we Knew," but it is powerful, spellbinding and pure Alice Hoffman.
This book is about many things: the uncertainty of life and how a group of people had their entire lives and careers changed because they were unlucky enough to be struck by powerful lightning. It's about family and the importance of friendships and the respect the simplest creatures, moles, deserve and should not so easily be discarded and killed. It's about love, and it reminds us that the way we deal with death is by living.
This in not "The Dovekeepers," nor "The World That we Knew," but it is powerful, spellbinding and pure Alice Hoffman.
April 30, 2022
I felt like I was definitely not among the target audience for this book, but it was fine. It uses an infrastructure of magic realism to make observations about life and death and sex and such and is quite literary... metaphorical and metaphysical and allegorical and symbolistic. Fire and lightning and ice, oh my! I found the story interesting, though none of the characters were at all likeable. It's more the kind of book one would pick for a club discussion than for strict entertainment. I listened to the audio, which was quite well performed by Nancy Travis.
June 15, 2024
This is a story of ice and fire, of hope and despair, of sadness and love and want and need and of light and dark…and fairy tales. I loved every sweet, magical, feathery, desperate, and bright word. It is also a story of loss, being stuck in a place you do not want to be, but you are unable to get to the end of the black tunnel. As always, time and the love of a few good people are the remedy.
December 16, 2018
Well it had to happen I did not like The Ice Queen I am sorry to say it was a dark magical tale of a woman's hardships growing up with a horrible mother who abused her, unfortunately this sent triggers as I have depression & Anxiety, the woman was constantly talking about death I just had to stop I DNF due to these triggers, although miss Hoffman writes another outstanding book, it just wasn't one of my favourites of hers.
August 20, 2009
I just read this really great book by Alice Hoffman. It's titled The Ice Queen.
From the get-go I was hooked. Hoffman has the knack for creating a narrative that is compelling. The main character, who remains nameless through the whole book, is a woman obsessed with death. As a young girl, she gets mad at her mom as she is driving away. In a moment of fury, she wishes her mom dead. It is the dead of winter and the next day, the young girl wakes up to find that her mom was killed in a car accident. Her wish had come true.
Later in the story, the girl moves to Florida with her brother. Florida is the lightning capital of the world. The woman is fascinated by lightning. So fascinated she wonders what it would be like to be struck by it. So she wishes, out loud, that she would be struck by lightning.
It happens.
Hoffman describes the effects of lightning strikes on people. The narrator, for instance, can no longer see red after she is struck. She is also constantly cold and she begins to refer to herself as an ice queen because she can no longer feel.
Then she meets Lazarus. A man who was struck by lightning, died, and then came back to life. She is fascinated by him because he could be someone that would not be affected by her death wishes. An odd romance ensues between the narrator and Lazarus.
There is more but I will not spoil it for you. Go find it and read it. It is really a story about the redemptive power of love.
I loved how Hoffman made the surreal and the real entwine. It felt like a magical book but there really was no magic in it. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading Jodi Picoult or other authors like her.
November 23, 2015
The last chapter of this book was nice, even though I hated everything up to it. It was very nice the way everything came together in a fuzzy warm happy ending. But I have to say mid-way through I decided Alice Hoffman writes as though she's not a native English speaker, lots of random phrasing and immediate contradictions, the kind of thing a listener forgives in a toddler or a foreigner. I had no pity or comprehension for the main character who blames herself as a child for causing her mother's death by wishing it in an angry fit, lives a life of self-isolation (as a stereotypical librarian of course), and then brings misery to herself once again when she sarcastically wishes she'd be struck by lightning. There's a scientist brother with a mathematician wife, a support group for fellow lightning struck victims, and an abandoned affair with a police officer who shares her obsession with death. She lets down a bunch of people including her supposed best friend Renny and boss librarian Frances, and some moles in her yard get eaten by her cat; and there's a lot of bust heaving supernaturalesque lightning survivor sex, some suspense, and then there was the very nice ending.
December 28, 2018
I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading this book. I loved her writing, it's beautiful. I love that the supernatural was introduced discretely.
I loved that the main character was a librarian and that her favorite Grimm tale was Goose girl, just like me.
I didn't felt depressed like so many other readers felt. I fell in love with her storytelling.
I am looking forward to exploring her other works, I only fear to read some of them because I have as a translation in Portuguese. But I could tell by the first 30 pages that she would become a favorite author.
This book centers around a woman who was always slightly different. The action becomes to unravel after she is struck by lightning. Her story is told in the first person. It can make you feel that you are reading a fairy tale for adults. It has a mystical element without overwhelmed it.
I loved that the main character was a librarian and that her favorite Grimm tale was Goose girl, just like me.
I didn't felt depressed like so many other readers felt. I fell in love with her storytelling.
I am looking forward to exploring her other works, I only fear to read some of them because I have as a translation in Portuguese. But I could tell by the first 30 pages that she would become a favorite author.
This book centers around a woman who was always slightly different. The action becomes to unravel after she is struck by lightning. Her story is told in the first person. It can make you feel that you are reading a fairy tale for adults. It has a mystical element without overwhelmed it.
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