 "Be careful what you wish for" ..., 2008-12-31
... so starts this unputdownable book. A quirky modern fairy tale taking its inspiration from the Brothers Grimm. It's about a young girl who thinks she wished her mother dead, an then when her mother does die lets it ruin her life. She hardens her heart and is determined to never let anyone get close again. She spends her life in New Jersey as a librarian dealing in cold facts, where only policeman Jack Lyons seems to understand her and satisfy her sexual needs, but that's as far as the relationship goes - she's dead inside.
Then she moves to Florida with her brother and is even more alone in this hot and humid state. One day she gets struck by lightning which she survives but is left with all sorts of physical difficulties, including not being able to see the colour red anymore. She hears about another lightning survivor who was pronounced dead but came back to life, and is drawn to seek him out.
Lazarus Jones is her complete opposite, a man alive with heat. They become obsessed with each other - the ice queen and fire king, and begin an affair, but it is clear that he is hiding something, and she is in danger of him thawing her heart ...
Not a word is wasted in this wonderful novel, yet your emotions are put through the wringer continuously. First of all, in sadness and frustration for this un-named woman who has let a childhood fantasy ruin her life, then when she finally learns to take a chance with love, you feel real happiness for her, it is so great when she lets go. Her life is a real emotional rollercoaster, but erotic too - her affair with Lazarus Jones is sizzling! But the thing that got to me most was her loss of red, the colour of lifeblood pulsing, the shade of her dress that so affects those who see it, but not her - she doesn't know the effect of its hue - I can't imagine not having that powerful colour in my life.
Fabulous, realistic, compelling, 2007-06-22
This story starts with an unlikely premise : a woman whose heart has been turned into ice. She can't feel anything ; empathy is a closed book.She's been like this since the night in her childhood when her mother died ; she functions, in a manner of speaking, holds down a job, is an acceptable citizen. Yet something is missing. Along comes unlikely premise number two : this woman gets struck by lightning and becomes humanized, starts to feel again, even to the extent of falling in love with, who else ? another survivor of a lightning-strike.
In hands less skilled and magical than Hoffman's, all this could soon become preposterous. But with Hoffman, it doesn't. Fairy tale intertwines with realism ; terror and anguish get all mixed up with beauty. I really cared about these people, couldn't put the book down.
I've yet to read a disappointing Alice Hoffman. May I recommend some of her novels ostensibly for "younger readers", namely "Aquamarine," "Indigo" and "Green Angel" ? I'm off now to order some more Hoffman titles, to make my summer a special thing.
A magical and haunting modern fairytale, 2008-10-29
This is a captivating modern fairytale about one woman's journey through tragedy and pain, towards truth, freedom and happiness. It opens with a little girl in a rage, standing on her porch making a terrible wish that her mother will die. When it comes true and she dies in a car accident that very night, the girl is consumed by an agonising pain and guilt that will haunt her into womanhood. To cope with everything she grows cold, burying herself in dark fairy stories and books on death, closing herself off from emotion and social contact even as she maintains her dependable image at the local library reference desk.
Everything changes when she moves to Florida, where her brother is now a married meteorologist working at a university. One fateful day, she is struck by lightning as she stands by her window. Her heart is a shard of ice, her body ravaged and her vision altered so she sees only crystal white or dull grey in place of the colour red. Agreeing to participate in her brother's research on lightning survivors, she begins to understand herself in light of the others' stories. Renny has hands threaded with gold where the lightning branded him with his own jewellery. The Dragon, struck twice, can spit fire.
And then she meets Lazarus Jones, a reclusive man who was struck by lightning and died for forty five minutes before inexplicably waking up in the morgue. He is her opposite, a man whose touch burns and whose breath is hot enough to set things on fire. Yet there is a spark of understanding between them and in their mutual need for human contact they begin a passionate and secretive love affair, the Ice Queen and the burning man. Thus, slowly, through their union and their gradual rehabilitation of mind and body, they find truth, peace and themselves. Finally the Ice Queen has thawed and can look outside of herself and her obsession with her past in time for a moving yet hopeful climax.
Woven through with fairy stories, lightning myth and the chaos theory, this is a moving and compelling novel that is utterly unlike anything I have ever read before. It manages to be beautiful yet macabre, and the ideas are expressed in pure poetry. Although it occasionally veered into a kind of self-conscious disjointedness, I couldn't put it down and was thoroughly immersed in it from start to finish. Each of the characters are touched by magic, and Lazarus Jones is a particularly strong, sexy and brooding anti-hero for female readers! The book has gone straight to the top of my wish list and I think it will haunt me for a long time. I'll definitely be seeking out more Hoffman in the near future...
MAGIC AND MYSTICISM, 2007-07-08
Remember childhood superstitions? "Step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back." So, as youngsters we did all we could do to avoid those sidewalk cracks. How about wishing upon a star? Many of us once believed that if you wished upon the first star you saw at night and wished hard enough that wish just might come true.
Fortunately, most of us do not have the ability of Alice Hoffman's narrator who begins her story by saying, "Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things, they burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back. They bruise and bake and come back to haunt you. I've made far too many wishes in my lifetime, the first when I was eight years old."
Her wish was that she would never see her mother again, and that proved to be true. A fatal automobile accident on an icy road takes her mother's life and forever changes our heroine who grows up to become a librarian, an ice queen if you will, remaining apart, aloof and trying to convince herself that she does not care.
Ned, her older brother by four years, takes a different route. He becomes a meteorologist, studying adverse weather conditions. In adulthood he invites her to join him in Florida. Once there, she is struck by lightning which serves to melt her long nurtured reserve.
There are many other survivors of lightning strikes, one in particular - Lazarus Jones, who was supposedly dead for forty minutes after being struck. Once she begins to thaw the ice queen realizes all that she has been missing and seeks out Lazarus.
The love affair that develops between them is pure Hoffman - a bit of magic as fire meets ice. Written in impeccable prose, The Ice Queen is superbly crafted, the work of a master wordsmith. This all too brief story is an affirmation of life and all that it offers; it is one we will not soon forget.
Enjoy!
- Gail Cooke
What a find..., 2007-03-27
I LOVED this book. It grabbed my attention so fully that I got stuck reading it in the bath for 2 hours! Seriously I just had to find out what happened at the end, and was sobbing mess by the time I'd finished. It made me cry both with saddness, empathy and joy..... Sigh!
This was my first dip in to Alice Hoffmans world, and I instantly became hooked, what an author! Her ability to create characters that you genuinely care about is rare, and the magical atmosphere she creates that builds as you read on grips you more and more! If you enjoy bieng totally immersed in a book then I wholly recommend this.
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