The Ice Queen
by Alice Hoffman

Reviewed by Frances Rossi

When we were children, my mother read us Hans Christian Anderson’s "The Snow Queen," a fairy tale about how evil can penetrate the heart like a shard of glass, leaving its victim cold to life and love. In that story the healing process requires a trek into the frozen north, land of whiteness, to the palace of the Snow Queen. I remember the outcome less clearly than the cold pilgrimage.

In The Ice Queen Alice Hoffman has consciously crafted a tale very reminiscent of "The Snow Queen," pointing out to us explicitly and through imagery that this is a fairy tale. Not one like Anderson’s, with its gentle, satisfying endings and morals, but like Grimm’s, where death plays a major role.

It is a winter evening when this young girl makes the wish that ends her mother’s life. Later, as a small-town librarian, an equally potent wish results in her being struck by lightening. The first wish leaves her with a frozen heart; the second ignites a spark that fires a journey of healing.

She joins a lightening survivors’ support group, meets fellow survivor Lazarus Jones, whose inner fire begins to melt her glacial core.

Like the determined children of "The Snow Queen," she fights her way through the blizzards of the soul, leaving behind all that is familiar—her brother, her first lover, her town and work. What hurdles, once crossed, finally allow her return? That is the meat of the story.

Hoffman weaves together a fascinating array of threads to create a modern day tale. The library plays a key part, for example, where clues emerge from the users’ library cards. Nothing is without significance in a fairy tale. The lightening strike leaves the Ice Queen unable to see red, and red becomes the magic color. Magic, chaos, all flutter through together, like snow flakes—no two the same—or like butterflies, whose fluttering can change the universe.

A fairy tale junkie myself, I was intrigued by Alice Hoffman’s story, with its rich metaphor and imagery. However, real fairy tales have been honed by their many tellers over the years until the essential story stands free and clear. This tale stands in need of some honing. The story gets bogged down, awash in negative feelings, entwined with too many themes, too many epiphanies. Paradoxically, we know every corner of the Ice Queen’s soul, but not her name, and not enough of who she was to appreciate who she becomes.

Yet Hoffman’s tale has a strange potency to touch those chords in us that only a fairytale can do. Deep down we all believe in magic and the supernatural, and fear its power over us. Who has not experienced the fulfillment of a poisonous wish? Who has not seen the mysterious symbolism in life that is too significant for mere chance? This story touches that primordial chord in our being, plays to the archetypal images of our psyche, and speaks to our inner child. It is well worth reading.