book review of the snow queen

A Summary and Analysis of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’ Fairy Tale

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Hans Christian Andersen’s influence on the fairy tale genre was profound. Although ‘The Snow Queen’, ‘ The Emperor’s New Clothes ’, ‘ The Little Mermaid ’, and ‘ The Ugly Duckling ’ have the ring of timeless fairy stories, they were all original tales written by the Danish storyteller in the mid-nineteenth century.

First published in 1844, ‘The Snow Queen’ (divided into seven parts) is perhaps the most celebrated of all of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. But what does this story mean? You can read ‘The Snow Queen’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis.

‘The Snow Queen’: summary

First, let’s begin with a brief plot summary of ‘The Snow Queen’. A hobgoblin has created a mirror which magnifies ugly and evil things, and shrinks good and pretty things. When hobgoblin’s associates took the mirror up into the sky to see what the angels looked like in it, it fell and smashed into millions of pieces.

Some of these pieces got into people’s eyes and distorted their view of the world; some pieces became windows; some pieces even made it into people’s hearts and turned those hearts as cold as ice. But many pieces were left scattered about the world.

Two small children – a boy, named Kay, and a girl, named Gerda – live as neighbours and love each other as if they were brother and sister. But one day, the Snow Queen appears outside Kay’s house and shortly after that, a piece of the hobgoblin’s magic mirror gets caught in his eye and reaches his heart, turning it to ice. Thereafter, he starts to behave badly towards Gerda and can only see the ugliness in things.

Kay takes his sledge into town, where the Snow Queen appears to him again and takes him under her wing, and they ride off on her sledge together. Gerda wonders what happened to Kay, fearing him dead. She throws her prized red shoes into the river as an offering, in the hope that Kay will come back in return.

But it doesn’t work, so Gerda gets in a boat and soon drifts out into the world beyond her home, where she meets an old lady who befriends her. Gerda talks to the flowers in the woman’s garden, in the hope that they will tell her where Kay is, but they speak to her in riddles.

Autumn comes, and Gerda continues on her way in the world. She meets a crow, who tells her that Kay is in the palace of a princess. But when Gerda travels to the palace, the prince is not Kay, although his appearance is similar. The prince and princess give Gerda a coach and warm coat, so she can continue her journey.

However, Gerda is captured by robbers, and taken to their castle. There she meets a little robber girl, whose doves tell Gerda that Kay was taken by the Snow Queen to her palace further north. The robber girl helps to free Gerda from the castle.

With the help of a reindeer, a Lapp woman (from Lapland) and a Finn woman (from Finland), Gerda travels north to the colder parts of Scandinavia, until she reaches the palace of the Snow Queen, where the Snow Queen has Kay under her spell. The only way to free him from it is to remove the shard of the magic mirror that has turned his heart to ice. Kay is nearly blue with cold, and it’s only the Snow Queen’s attention to him that keeps him from freezing.

The Snow Queen flies away to warmer countries, deserting Kay. Gerda turns up and recognises Kay instantly despite his changed appearance, but he sits still and cold and unresponsive. Upset, Gerda cries warm tears that drop onto the frozen Kay, and seep through to his heart, thawing it.

When Gerda sings a song they both know, he recognises her, and bursts into tears. His tears wash out the grain of glass from the magic mirror that was lodged in his eye, and he returns to his old self. Reunited, Gerda and Kay return home, growing up together and yet retaining their childlike innocence, as spring turns into summer.

‘The Snow Queen’: analysis

‘The Snow Queen’ is, fundamentally, a story about good and evil. But what is most noteworthy about this fairy tale – perhaps even more so than in Andersen’s other major fairy tales – is that the evil character at the centre of the story, namely the Snow Queen herself, doesn’t get her comeuppance at the end of the tale. Nor does the hobgoblin who created the mirror which allows Kay to be transformed in the first place.

One of the reasons why Andersen’s fairy stories have endured, perhaps, is that they have decidedly bittersweet ‘fairy-tale endings’: the good may end happily, but the bad don’t necessarily end unhappily. The Snow Queen isn’t heard of again after she flies off to warmer climes, abandoning poor Kay.

Of course, the mirror and the ice are loaded with symbolism and significance in the story. The mirror represents unhealthy cynicism which destroys youthful innocence: it’s significant that, when Kay becomes ‘infected’ with the grain of glass from the magic mirror, he wants to go off and play with the older boys, suggesting that wide-eyed wonder and childhood innocence are being replaced by surly adolescence, which involves disrespecting the kindly grandmother who reads stories to him and Gerda, and neglecting Gerda herself.

But the glass doesn’t infect everyone: Gerda is able to retain her innocence even as she grows up, as is Kay once he is saved by Gerda. By the same token, Kay’s cynicism isn’t his own fault: it’s just his rotten luck that the grain of the mirror gets caught in his eye.

This suggests that a person’s individual circumstances shape their views and their personalities, and that they aren’t necessarily to ‘blame’ for how they behave. But they can be cured of it, if they are shown love by their friends and those close to them.

This, of course, is what the tears that Gerda sheds over the frozen body of Kay represent. They spring from genuine sadness that she has lost him, and their warmth is enough to thaw his icy heart and bring him back.

Here, the gender roles are noteworthy: unlike ‘ Sleeping Beauty ’ or ‘ Snow White ’, it’s not a male character saving and waking a female character, but a heroine who rescues her male friend from the stasis (death?) he has been condemned to by the evil witch character (i.e. the Snow Queen).

But what does love triumph over in ‘The Snow Queen’? ‘Cold reason’ might be one answer. When Kay is ‘infected’ by the grain of glass from the magic mirror, he does lose the ability to see the beauty in everything around him. But seeing a worm in the rose when there is one isn’t nasty cynicism: it’s just realism.

The problem stems from losing all appreciation of the rose’s beauty, but blind romanticism and idealism are just as flawed (and arguably, just as dangerous). Nor is there anything wrong with being fond of maths (another ‘skill’ Kay picks up following his encounter with the mote of glass).

Yet this isn’t how Andersen intends to analyse or scrutinise his tale: he clearly was a Romantic who was unhappy with the way the world really was and felt that love and beauty should triumph over intellectualism and rationalism.

If the ultimate message of the fairy tale, when reduced to its core elements, is trite (love and beauty triumph over scientism and realism; love, if you will, conquers all), and if that message even rings a little hollow to those of us who have spent a little time in the ‘real world’, then such flaws are easily swept away by the captivating beauty of the tale itself, with its use of icy landscapes, clear and powerful symbolism (the mirror, the tears, the snow and ice itself), and refusal to follow the ‘prince + peasant girl = marriage’ formula beloved of many writers of fairy tales.

‘The Snow Queen’ is often regarded as a precursor to, and major influence on, the 2013 hit animated film Frozen . But although the film followed Andersen’s tale in the early stages of the movie’s development, the two narratives and characters ended up being very different.

Nevertheless, the influence of ‘The Snow Queen’ can be seen in many works of children’s literature: the Snow Queen’s temptation of Kay almost certainly influenced C. S. Lewis, whose White Witch similarly tempts Edmund away from the other children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . (Both Andersen’s Snow Queen and Lewis’s White Witch appear arrive into a snowy world and wear an inviting warm fur coat.)

And Lyra’s voyage to the frozen north to find her male friend and brother-in-all-but name, Roger, in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights echoes the journey that Gerda makes in Andersen’s fairy tale. Both Lyra and Gerda convince adults to help them in their quest through being kind and generous, so others feel compelled to help them in their pure quest to find their friend.

Curiously, and by way of conclusion, it’s worth noting a bit of biographical interest. Andersen may have been inspired to create the figure of the Snow Queen after the noted Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, with whom Andersen became infatuated, rejected his advances.

Andersen became Kay, the innocent boy who was ‘led on’ by the beautiful and bewitching, but ultimately cold, Snow Queen who reels the hapless boy in only to desert him once she has stolen his heart.

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8 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’ Fairy Tale”

This was always one of my favourite stories. Thank you for the excellent analysis here.

It’s so multi-layered, isn’t it? Thanks for the comment – it was fun analysing this one :)

Fabulous analysis.

Thanks, Lynn!

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The Snow Queen review – Michael Cunningham's poetic meditation on life and death

The Snow Queen is one of the strangest of Hans Christian Andersen 's fairytales. It unfolds in a dream-like sequence of scenes; its themes are innocence and experience, mortality, love and the quest for understanding. The figure of the Snow Queen has inspired various imitations, from CS Lewis's White Witch to Disney's Frozen , and now Pulitzer-winner Michael Cunningham 's sixth novel, which makes the homage explicit in its title and epigraph.

But Cunningham's novel is nothing so obvious as a modern-day retelling. Instead, he recreates the original's episodic nature, full of echoes and allusions, on his own familiar ground: a group of cultured, middle-aged New Yorkers trying to make sense of their lives in the face of an overwhelmingly pessimistic prognosis, on both the personal and political scale. The novel begins in 2004, as the US teeters on the brink of a second Bush term. For Cunningham's characters – gay, bohemian, liberal – this would be devastating, were they not already facing the more immediate tragedy of terminal cancer.

Barrett Meeks has been to Yale, but never made good on his early promise; now, in his late 30s, he works in a friend's shop and lives with his older brother, Tyler, an unsuccessful musician who tends bar between caring for his dying girlfriend, Beth. This domestic arrangement – two siblings "sharing" a spouse – clearly interests Cunningham, with its potential for divided loyalties and shifting alliances; it appeared in his last novel, By Nightfall , with which this new book shares many preoccupations. As Beth's illness neither improves nor progresses, all three find their lives marooned in a morbid stasis. Until one night, Barrett has a vision.

He's just been dumped by his younger boyfriend; walking through Central Park, he glances up and sees an unusual light in the night sky. "He felt the light's attention, a tingle that ran through him, a minute electrical buzz; a mild and pleasing voltage that permeated him, warmed him, seemed perhaps ever so slightly to illuminate him, so that he was brighter than he'd been, just a shade or two…"

Is it a sign from above? Barrett doesn't immediately tell anyone, but he does start going to church. Meanwhile Tyler continues his own quest for transcendence through the song he intends to compose for Beth – the definitive love song, to sing at their wedding: "It has to be a song in which a husband and singer declares himself to be not only a woman's life-mate, but her death-mate as well, although he, helpless, unconsulted, will keep on living. Good luck with that one." Small wonder that, faced with the impossibility of creating a work that can ever truly express the artist's intentions, Tyler seeks an easier epiphany in his secret drug habit. Shortly after Barrett sees the light, Beth's cancer disappears.

Like Virginia Woolf, who appeared in The Hours and whose work remains a clear influence on his writing, Cunningham's novels are often slight in terms of action; what gives The Snow Queen heft and substance is his gift for language, and the precision with which he anatomises his characters' most secret thoughts. He writes beautifully about their responses to death, and the guilt that almost always attaches to those feelings – even for Beth, for whom recovery is not without ambivalence: "There's the burden of gratitude. She hadn't expected that."

Tyler confesses his own shameful feelings towards Beth to Liz, the only friend he knows will not judge him, "because she knows the story of human desire, in all its squeamish particulars". This could be a succinct description of the author himself; he never averts his gaze from the most uncomfortable and painful complexities of feeling. But the book is also shot through with a dark humour that recognises the bathos in his characters' tragedies: "They're the subjects of a god who seems to prefer jokes to the cleansing shock of wrath."

Magic, wonder, transcendence – those chimeras we seek in drugs, art, religion, sex – are possible, the novel concludes, but not where we expect to find them. "It's hardly ever the destination we've been anticipating, is it?" The two children in Andersen's tale arrive home at the end of their adventures to discover that, to their surprise and without noticing, they have grown up. Barrett, too, manages to liberate himself from the baggage of his youth and arrive at a new, more mature self-knowledge. Tyler's fate is more ambiguous. It is he, after all, who gets the splinter of ice in his eye, like the boy in the fairytale. Perhaps this distorted vision is essential to the artist; it will be his salvation or his destruction, but Cunningham leaves us to wonder which.

The Snow Queen is more pared-down than its predecessor, clean and sharp as an ice crystal; a brief but profound and poetic meditation on love, death and compassion from a master craftsman of language.

• Michael Cunningham
• The Observer
• Hans Christian Andersen

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Closed chapters, wednesday, november 12, 2014, the snow queen, by hans christian anderson.

5 comments:

I have been wanting to read this story since Frozen and now the Frozen characters in Once Upon a Time. This sounds like a lovely edition.

I agree with you about the original books compared with the Disney version. I would not watch Mary Poppins when it first came out. I had seen the ads, and the Mary Poppins of the book was not young and beautiful! I wouldn't have it (but I have seen the movie years later, on TV). I haven't read Anderson's The Snow Queen, but I want to. Thanks for the recommendation and the link.

Delightful! What a great gift idea--thanks! :)

This sounds wonderful. I was just thinking the other day how fun it would be to read the original stories from all of the Disney princess movies. I would like my children to have read them as well. Thank you for the review. I will be heading over to purchase a copy!

I just finished listening to the audiobook version of this story and posting a review, and I remembered your discussing it and wanted to come back and remind myself of what you had said. I agree- it's a very rich and moving story, and though Disney's version is pleasant in itself, the original has so much more to it and we shouldn't let it be eclipsed by the movie.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the snow queen.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, “The Snow Queen,” a goblin creates a looking glass that distorts all that is virtuous and beautiful, making everything reflected in it appear low and ugly. After seeing how effectively it works, the goblin hatches a scheme to bring the looking glass to heaven to mock the angels with it. Instead, when the glass is shattered in its ascent, the shards that fall scatter everywhere, spreading misery to everyone. When a miniscule splinter lands in someone’s eye, his vision is instantly jaundiced and his view of life dimmed.

The characters at the heart of Michael Cunningham’s latest novel, THE SNOW QUEEN, are plagued by the distorting slivers of middle age, and the reckoning with the past, present and future that such a daunting fact of life can suddenly demand.

"Throughout the book, Cunningham portrays in a convincing, organic style the symbiotic nature of his characters’ relationships, the ways in which friends grow to become surrogate family members while siblings grow into surrogate parents."

In the book’s opening, Barrett Meeks --- 38 years old, gay, a prodigal son who has amounted to little --- has recently been dumped via a cold five-line text when he sees a light in the night sky over Central Park. The light seems to apprehend Barrett in the way he imagines “a whale might apprehend a swimmer, with a grave and regal and utterly unfrightened curiosity.” The vision shakes him to his core, but he keeps it to himself as he heads back to Bushwick where he lives with his brother, Tyler, a talented musician (with a hidden drug problem) who has failed to meet with any success, and Tyler’s bride-to-be, Beth, who co-owns a clothing shop. Beth is dying of cancer, and Tyler spends his days doing drugs, looking after Beth and trying to write the perfect song for her for their wedding. All of this is set against the backdrop of George W. Bush’s presidential re-election in 2004, and Cunningham skillfully uses it as a harbinger of stolen dreams and the failure of hope.

With his primary characters and their relationships established, Cunningham jumps ahead two years to New Year’s Eve, 2006. Beth’s cancer has miraculously retreated. Though grateful to still be alive, she feels a growing discontent and is haunted by a lack of purpose in what she’s doing with the gift of her second life. Meanwhile, without the role of caretaker to lend shape to his days, Tyler has fallen deeper into his drifting mode of existence while continuing his drug habit. And Barrett is still seeing a man named Sam, a nice enough guy, but not the stuff of great, romantic love.

Throughout the book, Cunningham portrays in a convincing, organic style the symbiotic nature of his characters’ relationships, the ways in which friends grow to become surrogate family members while siblings grow into surrogate parents. Whether working in short (at times too abrupt) chapters, as in the book’s opening, or later, in longer, more richly developed scenes, he illustrates the dense interconnectedness of lives lived in overlapping proximity, as well as the deeper psychic links that motivate and inform those lives. His prose is clause-laden, at times building toward satisfying peaks, at times merely piling up detail and crushing a fine point with redundancies. But for a book that hardly can be described as plot-driven, the style is well matched to the story.

If there’s a vexing problem, it’s that Cunningham seems to like his characters too much, as if he were afraid to harm them or make them suffer unduly. The breakups and deaths, the hurts, embarrassments and sober realizations that come in the book’s latter half happen offstage, or get neutralized in the relative safety of a character’s mind. As a result, most of what drama there is in THE SNOW QUEEN feels muffled beneath the folds of all that carefully constructed prose --- softened to inconvenience where it could have been heightened to a threat. While it doesn’t exactly ruin the book, it disappointingly diminishes what could have been a much better one.

Reviewed by Damian Van Denburgh on May 9, 2014

The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham

• Publication Date: May 5, 2015
• Genres: Fiction , Gay & Lesbian , Literary Fiction
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Picador
• ISBN-10: 1250067723
• ISBN-13: 9781250067722

Review:  In ‘The Snow Queen,’ Michael Cunningham wrestles with life

• Copy Link URL Copied!

While wandering through Central Park after getting dumped by his latest romantic fixation, Barrett Meeks, the aimless 38-year-old gay protagonist of Michael Cunningham’s new novel, “The Snow Queen,” has what seems to be, even to his proudly secular mind, a mystical experience: “There it was. A pale aqua light, translucent, a swatch of veil, star-high, no, lower than the stars, but high, higher than a spaceship hovering about the treetops.”

Because this scene is set in fall 2004, just before the election that will give George W. Bush a second presidential term, Barrett doesn’t rip out his smartphone and search Twitter for drone sightings. He does check the evening news when he gets home to the Brooklyn apartment he shares with his older brother, Tyler, and Tyler’s seriously ill girlfriend, Beth. But his Twilight Zone encounter hasn’t hit the news cycle.

What exactly happened to Barrett? “The sky regarded him, noted him, closed its eye again, and returned to what were, as Barrett can only imagine, more revelatory, incandescent, galaxy-wheeling dreams.” His fear is that the incident was “nothing, a blip, an accidental glimpse behind a celestial curtain, just one of those things.” But even if this is some kind of divine text message, how will Barrett, an underemployed Yale grad who spends most of his free time pondering either his rotten luck with men or his inability to stay interested in an occupation longer than a few months, ever unlock its meaning?

A yearning for the transcendent runs throughout Cunningham’s fiction. His characters always seem to be seeking a portal in the everyday for a glimpse at the eternal. Think of Clarissa, from Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel, “The Hours,” running errands through Greenwich Village in the same meditative manner of her strolling London predecessor from Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway,” keenly alert to the “crush and heave” of the “endless life” encompassing her.

A better comparison might be with New York art dealer Peter Harris from Cunningham’s 2010 novel, “By Nightfall,” which centers on a character who, like his author, is conscious of “the unending effort to find a balance between sentiment and irony, between beauty and rigor,” in the quest to “open a crack in the substance of the world through which mortal truth might shine.”

Although its characters have a habit of relating tales that make life seem stranger than fiction, “The Snow Queen” resembles “By Nightfall” in its desire to provide urbane literary entertainment without too much stress or strain over form. Big questions are nonetheless posed on this compact canvas, in which spiritual mystery is set beside related Dionysian subjects such as artistic creation, drug use and, of course sex (of a not especially satisfying variety, it must be said).

Writing about such matters is a tricky proposition. Cunningham largely avoids the traps of new age mumbo jumbo and sentimentality through a commendable display of negative capability, the fancy Keatsian term for a thinker’s capacity for “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

“The Snow Queen” is a novel that keeps ironically pointing out the inability of characters to predict the future, yet it remains compassionate toward the human need to impose provisional narrative order on the random flux of life. Barrett, suddenly “prone to Signs of Significance,” can’t help wondering if Beth’s cancer remission is somehow related to the light he saw in Central Park. (Yes, he’s a bit of a narcissist, like most everyone in this novel of aging bohemians desperate to unmire themselves in their middle years.)

Tyler, feverishly at work on a wedding song for his beloved that will at once express the depth of his feelings and fulfill the promise of his artistic gifts as a composer, is seeking control through creativity and falling steadily into addiction.

More a collection of traits — fading good looks, benevolent masculinity, frustrated creative ambition — Tyler is mostly seen in symbiotic relation to Barrett, who seems willing to sacrifice worldly achievement for the possibility of a complementary love. Their childhood is sketched in a manner that can seem a little too thematically convenient. (Barrett and Tyler’s mother was killed by lightning, giving them an early lesson in the baffling yet suggestive code of the universe.)

What Cunningham does get right is the way an addict’s life becomes a tissue of rationalized lies. Admirable too is the way he shows that even the closest of brothers, bunking together in not-quite-gentrified Bushwick in the shadow of a loved one’s illness, can remain something of a mystery to each other. Barrett will grow furious upon discovering that Tyler is still using, but Tyler will feel equally indignant that Barrett kept from him the strange vision that he related to others far less close to him.

The plot of “The Snow Queen” depends a good deal on discoveries about the past and the fateful turns of the future. The choices characters make are consequential, but individual agency can get lost in the bend of time. This gives the book a curious tempo. The first part proceeds slowly with finely detailed descriptions while the final section, set four years later, gallops forward with a soap opera-ish slew of surprises and reversals.

This is an odd work, engaging in parts and shot through with stunning lyricism, yet testing in the problematic personalities it brings together. The resolution Cunningham bestows is not unlike that otherworldly light in Central Park — subject to interpretation and dependent to an unusual degree on a character’s capacity to hold on to hope.

The Snow Queen A novel

Michael Cunningham Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 258 pp., $26

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Books | Review: ‘The Snow Queen’ by Michael Cunningham

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Only the intercession of the Snow Queen can break the spell, thawing hearts grown immune to goodness and beauty, restoring humanity.

This piece first ran in Printers Row Journal, delivered to Printers Row members with the Sunday Chicago Tribune and by digital edition via email. Click here to learn about joining Printers Row.

Michael Cunningham’s “The Snow Queen” is a loose riff on Andersen’s tale, set in modern-day New York City. His characters are likable people with good hearts, who sometimes make questionable decisions.

The story opens as 38-year-old Barrett Meeks walks home through Central Park, on a dark winter’s evening. Suddenly, a strangely beautiful blue-green “celestial light” appears in the sky directly above him, accompanied by the sensation that an omniscient being has entered his soul. Stunned, he watches as the light disappears, as abruptly as it arrived.

Uncertain the event happened at all, he distrusts his senses. Normal people don’t have supernatural experiences; that’s for the tabloids and bad cable TV. Barrett is a stable, if romantically challenged, man whose worst fault lies in repeatedly loving and losing the same type of impossibly youthful and vapid lover. The fear of others perceiving him as some sort of New Age convert keeps him from sharing the experience, even when holding it inside feels painfully lonely. “What, then,” Cunningham writes, “if that celestial eye opened specifically for Barrett — was the annunciation? What exactly did the light want him to go forth and do ?”

Barrett and his brother Tyler share an apartment with Tyler’s fiancée, Beth. Dying from incurable cancer, Beth is a pale, ethereal creature who — on a dramatic whim of Cunningham’s — dresses only in white. The symbolism between herself and the Snow Queen in the fairy tale is anything but subtle; added to her diaphanous portrait is the suggestion she possesses an otherworldly wisdom, an acceptance of her illness and inevitable fate. Cunningham writes, “(S)he’d been dying for quite some time. … (I)t had become so inevitable as to feel like a home of sorts.”

In preparation for their wedding, Tyler works to compose the perfect song to perform for Beth. It consumes him, to the point he begins losing faith in his talent. The theme of Tyler’s song, another homage to the fairy tale, is the image of Beth the queen sitting upon a throne of ice, beautiful yet unreachable, slowly moving away from him.

To walk the frozen halls at night

To find you on your throne of ice.

In the midst of his frustration, Tyler wakes one morning to find their bedroom window open, wind pelting the floor with snow. Stretching outside, something lodges in his eye, perhaps a snowflake or piece of grit, something he can’t remove. Once he’s closed the window and padded into the kitchen, the image of ice shards haunt him. Going back through the few lyrics he’s written, he’s unsure how this new idea will fit, yet he knows the song is incomplete without it. And yet, as he tries again, the song rings false.

The shards of insecurity and perfectionism have been planted in Tyler, and he is lost in gnawing fear that he will fail his lover. He can’t write, the wedding date is closing in, and his Snow Queen is dying.

Cunningham’s overarching theme begs the question if we, as human beings, can be held responsible for our own blunderings, or if we’re being nudged along by an unseen force we don’t understand. If some celestial force is leading us, are our flaws our own? And are we in need of saving by some external act of grace? In “The Snow Queen,” Cunningham has set up the questions; from here it’s up to us to find our own answers.

Lisa Guidarini is a freelance writer and librarian living in the Chicago suburbs.

“The Snow Queen”

By Michael Cunningham, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 258 pages, $26

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Reviews of The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

The Snow Queen

by Michael Cunningham

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' Opinion:

• Literary Fiction
• New England, USA
• New York State
• Contemporary
• Mid-Life Onwards
• Dealing with Loss
• Religious or Spiritual Themes

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About this Book

• Reading Guide

Book Summary

The Snow Queen , beautiful and heartbreaking, comic and tragic, proves again that Cunningham is one of the great novelists of his generation.

Michael Cunningham's luminous novel begins with a vision. It's November 2004. Barrett Meeks, having lost love yet again, is walking through Central Park when he is inspired to look up at the sky; there he sees a pale, translucent light that seems to regard him in a distinctly godlike way. Barrett doesn't believe in visions - or in God - but he can't deny what he's seen. At the same time, in the not-quite-gentrified Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, Tyler, Barrett's older brother, a struggling musician, is trying - and failing - to write a wedding song for Beth, his wife-to-be, who is seriously ill. Tyler is determined to write a song that will be not merely a sentimental ballad but an enduring expression of love. Barrett, haunted by the light, turns unexpectedly to religion. Tyler grows increasingly convinced that only drugs can release his creative powers. Beth tries to face mortality with as much courage as she can summon. Cunningham follows the Meeks brothers as each travels down a different path in his search for transcendence. In subtle, lucid prose, he demonstrates a profound empathy for his conflicted characters and a singular understanding of what lies at the core of the human soul. The Snow Queen , beautiful and heartbreaking, comic and tragic, proves again that Cunningham is one of the great novelists of his generation.

Excerpt The Snow Queen

A celestial light appeared to Barrett Meeks in the sky over Central Park, four days after Barrett had been mauled, once again, by love. It was by no means his first romantic dropkick, but it was the first to have been conveyed by way of a five- line text, the fifth line of which was a crushingly corporate wish for good luck in the future, followed by three lowercase xxx's. During the past four days, Barrett had been doing his best to remain undiscouraged by what seemed, lately, to be a series of progressively terse and tepid breakups. In his twenties, love had usually ended in fits of weeping, in shouts loud enough to set off the neighbors' dogs. On one occasion, he and his soon- to- be- ex had fought with their fists (Barrett can still hear the table tipping over, the sound the pepper mill made as it rolled lopsidedly across the floorboards). On another: a shouting match on Barrow Street, a bottle shattered (the words "falling in love" still suggest, ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Discuss the novel's title. Did your understanding of it shift throughout the book? How do the characters experience the Snow Queen's "Mirror of Reason," described in the epigraph by Hans Christian Andersen?
• When we first meet Barrett, what are his impressions of his destiny? What shapes his understanding of fate and love as the novel unfolds?
• What are your interpretations of The Snow Queen's celestial lights? What is Barrett seeking while he watches the priest an d parishioners in the Armenian Church? What does he find?
• How does Beth's illness inspire those around her? What is her role within her circle of loved ones?
• How were Tyler and Barrett affected by their mother's ...
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Reader reviews, bookbrowse review.

At its core, The Snow Queen is about searching: for clarity, miracles, faith, love, and meaningful work. Despite some flaws, the book is a sensitively rendered story in which significance, even hope, might be found in a stunning night sky yet also may be present closer to home, just waiting to be discovered... continued

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(Reviewed by Suzanne Reeder ).

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THE SNOW QUEEN

by Michael Cunningham ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2014

A stellar writer working on a small canvas; Cunningham has done greater work.

An apparition spotted in Central Park has a man marveling at the place of magic in our lives. Or is it all just a trick of the light?

November 2004: Middle-aged Barrett, bright but aimless, has just been dumped and has hit the skids professionally. He’s moved into a Brooklyn apartment with his songwriter brother, Tyler, who hides a cocaine addiction and fumes at Dubya-era politics while caring for his fiancee, Beth, in rapid decline from Stage 4 cancer. Amid all this, Barrett is struck by a vision of “pale aqua light” in the night sky that suggests something bigger and more transcendent. Fast-forward a year: Beth’s in remission, Barrett is settled, and Tyler’s career is looking up. This study of fickle fate from Cunningham ( By Nightfall , 2010, etc.) has its share of virtues. Since his debut,  A Home at the End of the World  (1990), he’s masterfully characterized ad hoc families, and he’s superb at highlighting the ways that small gestures (a finger pressed to a lover’s lips; a shift in the way two people sit together) reveal deeper emotional currents. Here, he deftly allows Barrett’s vision its power of wonderment while keeping the story firmly realistic. (References to fairy tales, magic and miracles are sparingly but strategically deployed.) Still, none of this keeps the novel from being somewhat slight, particularly in comparison to his debut and  The Hours  (1998): Life changes, we’re all a little open to spiritual suggestion, and why is this surprising? Barrett begins attending church, but Cunningham treats this more as a dash of characterization than an exploration of faith. A drama involving Tyler energizes the closing pages but feels distant from the book’s central concerns.

Pub Date: May 6, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-374-26632-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: March 4, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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More by Michael Cunningham

BOOK REVIEW

by Michael Cunningham

by Michael Cunningham ; illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

More About This Book

THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s ( I Found You , 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Pub Date: April 24, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE

More by Lisa Jewell

by Lisa Jewell

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

THE GREAT ALONE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2018

A tour de force.

In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.

After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s ( The Nightingale , 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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by Kristin Hannah

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The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham, book review

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The Snow Queen begins with the promise of greatness and the exciting prospect, in our current climate, of spiritual phenomena being explored seriously: “A celestial light appeared to Barrett Meeks in the sky over Central Park, four days after Barrett had been mauled, once again, by love.” It is modern-day Brooklyn. Barrett is gay and unfortunate in love. His brother Tyler, with whom he has an unusually close relationship, is trying to write a song to save his dying girlfriend Beth. Beth recovers from cancer – the Snow Queen’s kingdom – miraculously, only to succumb three months later and die.

It is unusual for a contemporary novel to align itself so overtly with a fairytale but Cunningham’s novel does, the references to frozen lakes, sleepers, underworlds, journeys, captivity, ‘cinder’s caught in people’s eyes, and snow (characters dream, write songs about, walk in, liken drugs and memories to snow) intruding obsessively. The overall parallel to Andersen’s fable is muddy however, single elements endowed with both malevolent and benevolent significance, characters taking the role of child rescuer, child captive and Snow Queen simultaneously. Initially the main disappointment was that I wanted the book to be about Barrett, who is introduced to us at the opening, but soon takes a back seat to Tyler. Then I found the characterization, though possibly sophisticated, too convoluted: both Barrett, Tyler and Beth, at various times, wish Beth was well, ill, dead and alive. Then there were just too many interchanges that didn’t ring true: Tyler’s rage that Barrett did not tell him about the light, Barrett’s desire to keep it secret, the just plain weird childhood interactions with their mother. Characters exist in some rarefied, high-Modernist atmosphere, sit in bathtubs while an all-important Woolfian window stands open (to glacial weather), discussing their dreams “as if they [are] scientists, taking notes”, spend all night taking drugs then emerge onto rooftops in snowstorms to ponder moments when they “were able to hold [their] very being in…outstretched hands and say, here I am…”, supposedly have money worries but sit around writing songs,”‘stand for a moment in…doorway[‘s] rectangle[s] of snowy light…appear[ing] to wonder, briefly, at the fact that [they’re] there at all”. The description of Beth’s illness is repellant: cancer is not about “white do-rag[s] wrapped with exquisite carelessness around…hairless heads” and descents into beautiful though ghostly kingdoms, but very real suffering.

Cunningham’s prose, though stylish, begins to feel as stuck as Tyler’s song. When you have read enough sentences such as: “Barrett, bluff-chested, naked in greying water, is in particular possession of his pink-white, grandly mortified glow” you begin to long for the directness, simplicity and power of a Coetzee. “I’m not trying to be profound , or anything,” Barrett remarks at one point, and found myself wishing his creator had taken a leaf out of his book. The whole thing begins to seem unnecessary – as does Barrett’s initial vision, which intrudes into unrelated conversations with all the weirdness, pointlessness and implausibility of a U.F.O.

Perhaps Cunningham does manage to dramatise the way hope leads to devastation and devastation hope (one of the possible themes, the two words described as “the same thing”’), perhaps he does manage to dramatise recognition and apprehension, but if he does it was lost on me. There are too many meanings, centres, gleaming nubs. Towards the end of the novel the character Barrett confided his sighting of the light to tells him he too has seen it then asks Barrett for money. By this point, if Barrett feels cheated, so does the reader. “What, then…was the annunciation?” Barrett wonders at one point; readers of The Snow Queen – if they make it that far - will do no less.

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Two Brothers in the Icy Grip of Midlife

By Michiko Kakutani

• April 27, 2014
• Share full article

Michael Cunningham’s resonant new novel, “The Snow Queen,” takes its title from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name about the redemptive powers of love and its ability to melt even the chilliest of hearts.

Unlike his acclaimed 1998 novel, “The Hours,” which worked a series of inventive variations on Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway,” however, this latest book has only the most tangential relationship to the Andersen tale. (The hit Disney movie “Frozen” hews considerably closer to the original.) Mr. Cunningham’s “Snow Queen” takes little more than its central theme and wintry imagery from the original fable to create a contemporary story about familial and romantic love — love lost and found.

The result is arguably Mr. Cunningham’s most original and emotionally piercing book to date. It’s a novel that does not rely heavily on literary allusions and echoes for its power — a story that showcases the author’s strengths as a writer and few of his liabilities, while creating a potent portrait of two brothers and their urgent midlife yearning to find some sense of purpose and belonging.

Triads and triptychs seem to exert a special hold over Mr. Cunningham’s imagination: “ The Hours ” and “ Specimen Days ” (2005) both featured three stories linked by shared themes and motifs; and the stories in “Specimen Days,” like the novels “ A Home at the End of the World ” (1990) and “ By Nightfall ” (2010), pivoted around three central characters. The same is true of “The Snow Queen,” which focuses on the lives of a 38-year-old man named Barrett, who works in a vintage clothing store and who has just been dumped by his latest boyfriend; his older brother, Tyler, a musician with little to no following, and a secret drug habit; and Tyler’s ailing girlfriend, Beth, who has received a diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer. Around this three orbit a motley, sometimes shifting group of friends, lovers and colleagues, who together form a small Brooklyn solar system that Mr. Cunningham charts with sympathy, humor and psychological precision.

The novel begins with Barrett having a vision — or a mystical experience — in Central Park one snowy evening in 2004: At first he thinks it’s a “freakish southerly appearance of the aurora borealis,” then it seems like something more metaphysical, like “the eye of God” looking down at him. After Googling “every possible malady (torn retina, brain tumor, epilepsy, psychotic break) that’s presaged by a vision of light,” he starts brooding over its meaning. Has he become one of those people who see U.F.O.’s and apparitions? Has the experience somehow changed him? Does it portend something good or ill? He decides not to tell his brother about what he’s seen: He “isn’t ready for Tyler’s skepticism, or his valiant efforts at belief. He’s really and truly not ready for Tyler to be worried about him.”

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Short Story Review for “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen

For December, I wanted to review at least one story that fit the season but wasn’t necessarily a Christmas story. I searched through my books and came across the collection of Best Loved Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen . I bought this massive book years ago but never even opened it. Andersen’s stories were the inspiration for many Disney movies and other productions; such as: “The Little Mermaid”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Princess and the Pea” and “Thumbelina”. He also wrote “The Snow Queen” and that is what I’m reviewing today. The full story is available online for free and I’m going to include a link after my final thoughts so that you can read it if you’d like. Let’s get into the review for this oddly dark fairy tale!

The History & Story Layout

“The Snow Queen” is an original fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The tale was first published December 21, 1844 in New Fairy Tales. The story centers on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by Gerda and her friend, Kay (sometimes spelled Kai).

The story is one of Andersen’s longest and most highly acclaimed stories. It is regularly included in selected tales and collections of his work and is frequently reprinted in illustrated storybook editions for children.

“The Snow Queen” is a tale told in seven ‘stories’:

• About the Mirror and Its Pieces
• A Little Boy and a Little Girl
• The Flower Garden of the Woman Who Knew Magic
• The Prince and the Princess
• The Little Robber Girl
• The Lapp Woman and the Finn Woman
• What Happened at the Snow Queen’s Palace and What Happened Afterwards

My Thoughts

I unfortunately haven’t read many of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories. I’m definitely more familiar with Disney’s “everyone gets a happy ending” fairy tales. I chose to read “The Snow Queen” primarily because one of my all time favorite video games is Dark Parables: Rise of the Snow Queen . In the game, the stories of “Snow White” and “The Snow Queen” are meshed together. However, it is mostly inspired by “The Snow Queen” with a similar story line, characters named Gerda and Kai (or Kay) and a cursed mirror. Thanks to that game, I was familiar with the overall story but I am so glad that I chose to read the actual fairy tale because I LOVED it.

“The Snow Queen” was weird in the best possible way. It had the typical good verses evil struggle but instead of good always winning, evil frequently went unpunished. The story begins with a troll (or demon) creating a cursed mirror that would reflect the worst aspects of people and life. The mirror is broken and the shards fly all over the world.  One of the main characters, Kay, gets one in his heart and one in his eye; unbeknownst to him. His sweet personality changes and he becomes negative, even to his best friend, Gerda. Soon after, the Snow Queen lures Kay away with her and takes him to her home in the icy north. Gerda then goes on a fantastical adventure to save her friend.

This story has everything you would expect there to be in a fairy tale: a grand adventure, talking flowers, helpful animals (that also talk) and royalty. What makes it different than what we’re used to today is the more negative aspects that are mixed in. This story makes frequent references to death. Gerda meets some talking flowers and well, here’s some excerpts of what they say to her:

“Many thanks!” said little Gerda; and she went to the other flowers, looked into their cups, and asked, “Don’t you know where little Kay is?”

But every flower stood in the sunshine, and dreamed its own fairy tale or its own story: and they all told her very many things, but not one knew anything of Kay.

Well, what did the Tiger-Lily say?

“Hearest thou not the drum? Bum! Bum! Those are the only two tones. Always bum! Bum! Hark to the plaintive song of the old woman, to the call of the priests! The Hindoo woman in her long robe stands upon the funeral pile; the flames rise around her and her dead husband, but the Hindoo woman thinks on the living one in the surrounding circle; on him whose eyes burn hotter than the flames–on him, the fire of whose eyes pierces her heart more than the flames which soon will burn her body to ashes. Can the heart’s flame die in the flame of the funeral pile?”

There’s also this one…

“What do the Hyacinths say?

“There were once upon a time three sisters, quite transparent, and very beautiful. The robe of the one was red, that of the second blue, and that of the third white. They danced hand in hand beside the calm lake in the clear moonshine. They were not elfin maidens, but mortal children. A sweet fragrance was smelt, and the maidens vanished in the wood; the fragrance grew stronger–three coffins, and in them three lovely maidens, glided out of the forest and across the lake: the shining glow-worms flew around like little floating lights. Do the dancing maidens sleep, or are they dead? The odour of the flowers says they are corpses; the evening bell tolls for the dead!”

“You make me quite sad,” said little Gerda. “I cannot help thinking of the dead maidens. Oh! is little Kay really dead? The Roses have been in the earth, and they say no.”

That’s a lot of death talk for a fairy tale and that’s not even all of it. There’s also some casual murder thrown in. These negative topics are casually written in with the positive ones and it makes for a jarring, but captivating, read.

As for the Snow Queen, she’s neither good nor evil, she just is. Her motives for kidnapping Kay are never given, she doesn’t treat him badly and she allows him to be rescued by Gerda. I like to think she was just lonely.

“The Snow Queen” is beautifully written and was a much more entertaining read than I expected it to be. I will be reading more of Hans Christian Andersen’s works in the future.

Final Thoughts

“The Snow Queen” was the main inspiration for one of Disney’s most popular movies, Frozen . I personally haven’t seen Frozen so I can’t say how close it is to the original story but you’ll have to let me know how similar they are. Have you read this story or any of Andersen’s other fairy tales? Let me know which one is your favorite! Thanks for reading and have a great day!

*Here’s the link to the full story: “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen

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2 thoughts on “ short story review for “the snow queen” by hans christian andersen ”.

I have the same book, but I haven’t really opened it either. I need to read The Snow Queen; I think I started/intended to read it, but never did. I loved reading the Little Mermaid though! I remember reading it when I was little even though it’s darker than the Disney version.

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The Little Mermaid is next on my list to read!

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The Robber Girl is back! Bryony has a special destiny, foretold in The Book of The Ancients. With her dark eyes on a handsome Roma boy, Sean, and a gypsy crown, she has a battle to win, cheating death. She must rescue Adam from the Snow Queen’s web of evil, defeating the wizard and his dark sorcery. If she fails, the evil power couple will cast a maleficent shadow of doom across the world, enslaving all children until the end of time. In this tale of romance, magic, rivalry, inheritance, and destiny, a heartwarming epic journey awaits.

My book is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's original story, "The Snow Queen."

Get your copy of THE SNOW QUEEN today

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• Inspirational

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The Snow Queen is an adventurous fairy tale book about how an evil snow queen manages, with the help of an ice wizard, to possess both children and teenagers, to try to fulfill her misplaced thirst for fame, wealth, and love. The queen's hidden secret is that she feels unlucky, having never found someone who could truly love her. In the book, her first victim is an innocent and fatherless teenage boy named Adam. The queen traps Adam within a kaleidoscope that the ice wizard skillfully makes for her.

• Read more about The Snow Queen review by Prizzy

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The Snow Queen

Michael cunningham.

258 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2014

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The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge won the Hugo Award in 1981 and was also nominated for a Nebula Award. This science fiction novel was followed by a shorter novel, World’s End , which is the story of what happened to BZ Gundhalinu after the first novel ended. The Summer Queen is the direct sequel to The Snow Queen and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1992. The most recent novel set in this universe, Tangled Up In Blue, is a stand-alone about BZ Gundhalinu that takes place during the earlier part of The Snow Queen . Unfortunately, The Snow Queen and World’s End are both out of print now.

The story of The Snow Queen is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale sharing the same title. The planet Tiamat is divided into two peoples, the Winters and the Summers. For about 150 years, the Stargate to other worlds remains open and during this time Tiamat is ruled by a Winter Queen. Once the gate closes and the foreigners leave, the Winter Queen is removed in favor of a Summer Queen. The Winters enjoy the technological benefits of the offworlders who visit during their time in power, but the Summers are a more spiritual people who do not share the Winters’ interest in technology and are considered to be a rather primitive people by the Winters.

The reign of the Winter Queen, Arienrhod, is drawing to an end after 150 years during which she has been kept young by the “water of life.” Reluctant to lose her important position, Arienrhod secretly had several clones created and raised as Summers in the hopes that one will survive and succeed her as queen. Only one of these doubles grows up to be a possibility for Arienrhod’s successor, Moon Dawntreader Summer.

Moon and her cousin Sparks grew up together – and grew to love each other. Ever since they were young, Moon and Sparks have dreamed of becoming sybils, whom the Summers respect for their ability to enter into a trance and answer questions posed to them truly. While Moon passes the test, Sparks does not which causes a rift between them, particularly as it is known that to love a sybil is death. Sparks leaves for the Winter town of Carbuncle where Arienrhod rules, and once the queen hears that her clone’s cousin is there, she uses him to draw Moon near. Yet her plan goes awry and Moon ends up leaving the world behind – and leaving both Arienrhod and Sparks to turn to each other while mourning her loss. However, Moon learns some important truths offworld and feels it is her destiny to return to Tiamat.

This is a difficult book for me to talk about without spoilers since the second half is where it began taking off and tying everything together so nicely. There’s not anything I can think of that I didn’t like about it since even the parts that seemed to drag a little when I first read them seemed important to me later – I don’t think it would have been the same without them. I loved the writing, the characters, the story, the romance and the social structure of the planet Tiamat.

If there was one flaw I saw, it may be that Moon seemed too perfect – everyone seemed to love her, she showed kindness to those she had every reason to hate, she was beautiful, she never stopped caring for Sparks even when he could be a bit of a jerk, she fulfilled her lifelong dream of becoming a sybil and she attained special knowledge. None of this mattered to me, though, and I even thought it worked with her character when it came to seeing how she was so similar yet so different from Arienrhod. They both had some shared traits but Moon was so innocent while the older queen was manipulative. It made me wonder if young Arienrhod was more like Moon and what that means for Moon’s future.

Other than Moon, there were other characters who had their time in the limelight and I enjoyed reading about every single one of them. At first, I found myself wanting to just read about Moon or Arienrhod and wondered why there was time spent with some of the other characters, but by the end I found I couldn’t imagine the book without each and every one of them as all of their stories affected me.

Tiamat itself was such a wonderful place to visit and was very well-developed without being full of dull descriptions. I really enjoyed reading about the divide between the Summers and Winters, the sybils and how they were viewed by the two different peoples and the discovery of what sybils were as well as the revelation about the source of the water of life.

The Snow Queen is a wonderful science fiction book with a well-realized setting and culture, great characters I came to really sympathize with, lovely writing and some memorable scenes. It’s one of those rare books that I just love and wouldn’t change in the least. I’m very much looking forward to reading The Summer Queen and more by Joan D. Vinge.

My Rating: 10/10

Where I got my reading copy : My husband gave me a signed copy for Christmas.

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• Tags: Joan D. Vinge , Science Fiction , The Snow Queen  

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The Snow Queen: A Novel Paperback – May 5, 2015

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of The Hours "Michael Cunningham's best novel in more than a decade."- Megan O'Grady, Vogue It's November 2004. Barrett Meeks, having lost love yet again, is walking through Central Park when he is inspired to look up at the sky; there he sees a pale, translucent light that seems to regard him in a distinctly godlike way. At the same time, in Brooklyn, Barrett's older brother, Tyler, is struggling to make his way as a musician-and to write a wedding song for Beth, his wife-to-be, who is seriously ill. While Barrett turns unexpectedly to religion, Tyler grows increasingly convinced that only drugs can release his creative powers, and Beth tries to face mortality with as much courage as she can summon. Michael Cunningham follows the Meeks brothers as each travels down a different path in his search for transcendence, demonstrating a singular understanding of what lies at the core of the human soul. Beautiful and heartbreaking, comic and tragic, The Snow Queen proves again that Cunningham is one of the great novelists of his generation.

• Print length 272 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Picador
• Publication date May 5, 2015
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.61 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1250067723
• ISBN-13 978-1250067722
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

“Arguably Mr. Cunningham's most original and emotionally piercing book to date.” ― Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Michael Cunningham's best novel in more than a decade.” ― Megan O'Grady, Vogue “At its best, the novel is Cunningham in his sweet spot, compassionate, emotionally exhilarating, devilishly fun.” ― Maria Russo, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) “That voice, Cunningham's inimitable style, is the real miracle of The Snow Queen.... Remarkable.” ― Ron Charles, The Washington Post “The miraculous returns to earth in sentences so gorgeous that we can barely feel the wheels touch down.... This is a masterful performance.” ― John Freeman, The Boston Globe “Michael Cunningham writes some of the most beautiful prose in contemporary American fiction, and his gorgeous way with words is on full display in his new novel, The Snow Queen . . . The author is tender with his characters even when they're obnoxious or dumb. And he's particularly tender with Tyler, a self-deluding drug addict who is also that quintessential Cunningham protagonist, the artist struggling with his muse. As in his Pulitzer prize-winner, The Hours , Cunningham writes with specificity and intimate knowledge about the desire ‘to make something … marvelous, something miraculous.' Failure is not a threat inevitably overcome; it happens. The wedding song Tyler composes for Beth is, he knows, ‘more sentimental than searing.' His wincing analysis of the song's weaknesses gives a much truer portrait of the artistic process than the gauzy romanticism we usually get. Art is Cunningham's deepest faith, the Big Subject he approaches with a passion and conviction . . . There aren't any final answers in Cunningham's hauntingly inconclusive novel, which fittingly enough, closes with a question.” ― Wendy Smith, The Daily Beast “Cunningham weaves an ode to the immortal city of New York and its artistic souls and lost citizens. His books remind us that the mythologies we imagine about our lives stem from seemingly ordinary moments and seemingly ordinary people . . . With elegant prose that peeks into the most private thoughts of his characters, Cunningham challenges the reader to imagine a pervasive, indifferent god--if any god even exists.” ― Allie Ghaman, The Washington Post “Like By Nightfall (2010), Cunningham's elegant and haunting new novel examines the complex dynamics among a couple and a brother. In this configuration, Barrett Meeks, a poetically minded man in his late thirties who has just been dumped by his most recent boyfriend via text message, shares a Brooklyn apartment with Tyler, his older musician-bartender brother, and Beth, Tyler's great love. Beth and Barrett work in Liz's vintage shop. She's 52; her current lover, Andrew, is 28. Beth is undergoing full-throttle treatment for cancer. Tyler is struggling to write the perfect love song for their wedding, and breaking his promise not to do drugs. Barrett, long afflicted by his flitting interest in everything, remains in an altered state after seeing a strangely animated "celestial light' over dark and snowy Central Park. As his characters try to reconcile exalted dreams and crushing reality, Cunningham orchestrates intensifying inner monologues addressing such ephemeral yet essential aspects of life as shifting perspectives, tides of desire and fear, ‘rampancy' versus ‘languidness,' and revelation and receptivity. Tender, funny, and sorrowful, Cunningham's beautiful novel is as radiant and shimmering as Barrett's mysterious light in the sky, gently illuminating the gossamer web of memories, feelings, and hopes that mysteriously connect us to each other as the planet spins its way round and round the sun.” ― Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) “The omniscience that runs throughout the novel's narration allows readers to not only glimpse, but take deep and heart-wrenching looks into the lives of these very tangible characters . . . Truths that other characters are ignorant to, moments that other characters are blind to, become welcome knowledge for readers in Cunningham's twisted and often disparaging world. Cunningham weaves whispers of spirituality, questions of mortality, themes of family and lessons on life's finer, more subtle pleasures. A work infused with passion, hatred, beauty and disgust, I found myself hard pressed to put the book down.” ― Chicagoist “Michael Cunningham is known for his lyric and evocative language, and his sixth novel, The Snow Queen , is no exception . . . An emotionally charged story, simply told, about four people who come to defy that term ‘middle age.'” ― Alex Gilvarry, New Orleans Public Radio “Michael Cunningham is among America's most gifted writers: graceful, delicately hued, wise.” ― Earl Pike, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) “Some books I don't want to read on my iPad. I want to go to a bookstore, buy a hardcover and slowly savor every brand-new page, preferably in a hot bath with a serious box of chocolates at my side. One such book is The Snow Queen . . . The narrative is almost amorphous, constructed of seemingly random scenes, all of which are situations set on the brink of something -- a presidential election, New Year's Eve, any one of the characters' hopes about to be realized or shattered. And the sense they make together is one of almost understanding one's life, or just about grasping the meaning of the universe, or practically but not quite realizing why we care about our friends and lovers. Or why we don't. In the end there's no doubt a story has been told and it's one that can easily stay with its readers for the rest of their lives. But it would be a fool's errand to try to go back to connect all the dots. It's like our own lives, full of seemingly pointless moments that add up to something that matters, a vision realized, perhaps, even if we never quite get to the bottom of what it all means . . . by reading his work, he reminds us that we are not alone in our desires, despair and dreams, and in our quests to find meaning in our lives together.” ― Rob Phelps, Wicked Local “ The Snow Queen is inspired by classic fairytales, though Cunningham's sensibilities skew in a thoroughly modern (even post-modern) direction, resulting in a very beautiful hodgepodge . . . The lush writing is gorgeous throughout . . . At a technical level The Snow Queen is extraordinary.” ―Ed Power, The Irish Independent “ The Snow Queen wears its contemporaneity lightly, because the novel really concerns itself with eternal themes: the quest for love, the unfairness and inevitability of death and the hope of a meaningful life . . . [A] thoughtful, intimate novel.” ―Martha T. Moore, USA Today “The attention to the quotidian creates the best parts of the book. In the quiet moments between the chaos of illness and new relationships, Cunningham gives the characters time to slow down and think.” ―Lindsay VanAsdalan, The City Paper (Baltimore)

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Excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Reprint edition (May 5, 2015)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250067723
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250067722
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.61 x 8.25 inches
• #10,066 in Fiction Urban Life
• #33,881 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
• #113,747 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Michael cunningham.

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