Blurb
Where there is wonder, there is love – an unforgettable story of the beauty and savagery of the Alaskan wilderness, from the author of the million-copy international bestseller, The Snow Child.
‘I read with my heart in my mouth, filled with wonder’ Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
‘An enthralling novel about the endurance of love, the power of forgiveness and the savage, irresistible allure of wild places’ Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
Birdie’s keeping it together, of course she is. So she’s a little hungover on her shifts, and has to bring her daughter to the lodge while she waits tables, but Emaleen never goes hungry. It’s a tough town to be a single mother, and Birdie just needs to get by.
And then Birdie meets Arthur, who is quieter than most men, but makes her want to listen; who is gentle with Emaleen, and understands Birdie’s fascination with the mountains in whose shadow they live. When Arthur asks Birdie and Emaleen to leave the lodge and make a home, just the three of them, in his off-grid cabin, Birdie’s answer, in a heartbeat, is yes.
Out in the wilderness Birdie’s days are harsher and richer than she ever imagined possible. Here she will feel truly at one with nature. Here she, and Emaleen, will learn the whole, fearful truth about Arthur.
Review
Many thanks to the publisher and to the Squadpod for my ARC of this book, which I received in exchange for an honest review. It came with a copy of The Snow Child, which I hadn’t read for years, so I reread that first and was just as enchanted as I had been the first time.
Black Woods, Blue Sky is darker than The Snow Child, and there’s a more modern slant to it, as embodied by Birdie, a single mother bringing up her daughter on the edge of the Alaskan wilderness. It also goes harder on the magical realism, bringing to mind some of my favourite writers like Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter. There’s a tough beauty here that extends beyond the gorgeous prose and into the characters themselves. Birdie, Emaleen and Arthur are all utterly compelling, and the added perspective we gain from Arthur’s father, Warren, makes this a richly complex novel.
I was mesmerised by Eowyn Ivey’s writing in this novel – she conjures up the wilderness like no other writer, and plunges into the human heart just as seamlessly. The balancing act of terror and hope is woven around the reader like a spell, and I found myself captivated by the gradual, powerful momentum of the story. The tension is built so slowly and subtly, and the descriptions are both raw and beautiful – nature red in tooth and claw but also unbearably tender. It is so cleverly written that we enter suspension of disbelief as readily as a child listening to a fairytale, and we’re held in the story’s gentle grasp until the last page.
There’s an unexpected jump at the end that I thought worked brilliantly; it surprised me at a point in the book where I thought we’d reached an inevitable conclusion, and for me, it added a whole extra layer of meaning to an already deliciously nuanced story.
There is something so rich and strange and profound about this novel – it moved me so deeply, and I know it is one that I will revisit. I can’t recommend this book highly enough – it has so much to teach us about nature, about love, and about the power of stories. An unforgettable reading experience.
Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey is published by Tinder Press and is available to purchase here.
Elspells 