Book: The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

Date Read: February 16 to March 2, 2020

Rating: 4 (of 5) stars

This was gifted to be by a friend who is a big fan of Alice Hoffman—and inadvertently ended up with two copies of this book on her shelf. I was not quite sure what to expect with this, as on the surface it did not appear to be the type of book that I would normally choose for myself. The back cover description makes it appear a sort of romance novel, with perhaps a slight peculiarity in that it focuses on lightning strike survivors. I will say that while there was definitely a romance element here, there was so much more than that.

The story is told in the first person, through the voice of a narrator who remains nameless throughout. She has a clear obsession with fate and death, stemming from an incident in her childhood: she wished her mother dead in anger, the same night that her mother was killed in a car accident. Since that night, she has focused her life on shutting out all emotional connection; turning herself into the Ice Queen from a fairly tale that she invented while coping with her mother’s death. Over the course of her life, she has built herself the perfect façade by going through the motions of what others expect from her, with no true emotional investment. She has convinced herself of her own power to wish ill will into the world, including a wish to be struck by lightning made in a desperate moment, just after she has agreed to move to Florida to live nearer to her brother.

After the lightning strike, she experiences many side effects, one which melds well with the icy persona she has created for herself—she can no longer see the color red. At her brother’s urging, she participates in a study of lightning strike survivors, where she meets the very limited number of acquaintances she has in Florida. This is also where she first hears rumors about the survivors that have refused to participate in the study: a man who survived multiple strikes, and chased researchers away from his home; a man who was declared dead, only to wake up nearly 40 minutes later and walk out of the hospital. She becomes fascinated with the idea of this man, referred to by others as Lazarus, seeking him out for what turns out to be an unusual love affair.

The narrator and Lazarus turn out to be an odd pair, the self proclaimed woman of ice involved with a man whose lightning strike side effects include an unusually high body temperature. Although she does not realize it at the onset, this relationship sparks the journey she needs to discover the meaning of love and cope with the losses in her past. For a time, she pushes all other things in her life aside in her obsession with Lazarus—tentative friendships, her job, her relationship with her brother. However, everything becomes blurred for her when she allows her curiosity to put the relationship at risk, simultaneously throwing her other poor relationship behaviors into the spotlight.

Boris’s Thoughts: “I always appreciate a book with a cat, but feel like she was not quite fair to the cat. 2 paws.”