Sobering, but a very memorable story! | The Ice Queen: A Novel

Iced Heat | The Ice Queen: A Novel | Alice Hoffman

books:


	• The Ice Queen: A Novel Alice Hoffman Little, Brown and Company, 2005 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 77 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Wonderous Book!

It was difficult to find the exact descriptive word for this Alice Hoffman novel. "Spectacular" "Imaginative", "Dream-Like"...I couldn't choose. I found "The Ice Queen" absolutely breathtaking. The tale's core centers around fairytails and the realization that life is more than what you wish for. The main character sees her life in "before and after" terms. A quiet librarian, she's forced into living in an uncomfortable environment and then struck by lightning. Much like being reborn, we see her evolve through relationships with a lover, her brother and her sister-in-law. I really enjoy Hoffman's books and this is one of my fave. You many never look at the color red the same way again!

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Sobering, but a very memorable story!

Honestly at first the tone of the book is so dark I wasn't sure I was going to keep reading. Next thing I knew, while there is not even a hint of a "Disney ending" - I could not put it down.

Seeing life through the eyes of the main character was illuminating and will stay with me for quite some time!

Excellent reading!

Iced Heat

A strange and ultimately haunting story that kept me turning pages into the night. The eeriness of it is striking. Hoffman did a fine job in all aspects of this work.

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The Ice Queen

This book grabbed me from page one.
It starts off with an 8 year old girl who lives with her mother and older brother, it is January and thier house is cold, the heat is off, they are poor. The mom is going out with her two friends to celebrate her 30th birthday and the daughter begs her not to go. The mom goes anyway, and the little girl makes a wish to 'never see her mother again'. The mom dies that night in a car accident. The girl always blames herself for the accident. She and her brother go to live with their grandmother in New Jersey.

As an adult, the brother, Ned, eventually moves out and ends up becoming a teacher and marrying one as well. The girl winds up becoming a librarian and lives with her grandmother until her grandma's death. Being left alone now, the girl moves to Florida, where Ned lives. She is a loner, works at the library and has no outside life other than that. One day while talking to Ned, she wishes out lout to be struck my lightning....soon after, she is.

I found this aspect of the story to be odd and fascinating. She is struck by lightning while at home. It almost kills her, but she survives, and is really sick, the equivalent of having radiation poisoning. She loses her hair, cannot eat, hears a 'clicking' sound in her head and becomes color blind to the color red.

The woman in this story always believes that if she makes a wish, it will come true. So much tragedy has happened in her life this way, by making wishes. She considers herself an 'ice queen', so no one can touch her, she has a heart made of ice.
I won't give anymore details on the story, exept that it is fascinating.
I liked the main character, whose name is never given.
I liked her brother Ned alot, and her relationship with him, especially in the end of the story. Her close friend Renny is another character that is well written and likeable.

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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.