ammars69ce

When I met Alice Hoffman in 2010 at a book signing at the Tucson Festival of Books and told her I was a librarian and a storyteller, she asked if I had read her book, The Ice Queen,. She told me it was about a librarian and had a lot to do fairy tales. Certainly enough to hook me. Just before the 2011 Tucson Festival of Books, it finally came to the top of my book pile. This New Jersey reference librarian knows the power of wishing. The night she angrily wished her mother was dead when she left the house to celebrate her 30th birthday with friends was the night her mother died in a car crash. Years later, grieving after her grandmother, with whom she had been living ever since her mother's death, dies, she wishes to be struck by lightning and is. In her recovery, she delves even deeper into her beloved fairy tales and the stories she has told herself all her life and finds many an unexpected nugget that pulls her finally back to life. Stories, lightning lore, and relationships power this compelling novel. There a number of great lines in the novel regarding the power of stories. But I especially enjoyed our heroine's scientist brother's insight that chaos theory lurks in the heart of fairy tales. "At the heart of his paper was the notion that fairy tales relieved us of our need for order and allowed us impossible, irrational desires. Magic was real, that was his thesis. 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." (Other) Lines to Remember: "Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?" "The story is always about searching for the truth, no matter what it might bring. Even when nothing was what it appeared to be, when everything was hidden, there was a center not even I could run from: who I truly was, what I felt, what I was deep inside." Book Pairings: Reading all that lightning lore makes me want to finally read Gretel Ehrlich's A Match to the Heart, her account of being struck by lightning. I really enjoyed her memoir The Solace of Open Spaces where she briefly mentions the first (!) time she is struck by lightning. Other reviewers have mentioned Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter as other good pairings for the women-centered and fairy tale-exploring aspects of the novel and I would heartily agree with that as well.

2022-11-14 18:25