The Ice Queen

The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

I picked up this book because I have heard of the author from her YA titles but it was also available on CD, so I was able to travel with it on my long drives this week. I didn't know what to expect. This is the story of a librarian who feels she is ice inside, her mother died when she was very young and her grandmother raised her and her brother. She became a librarian because she didn't know what else to do. She is obsessed with death, its causes, it effects, anything and everything. On the outside she seems normal but she is not, she is ice and fights emotion. She also feels that if she wishes for something it will happen, such as her mother not coming back. One of her motto's is "be careful what you wish for". When her elderly grandmother dies the woman's brother takes her to Florida where she begins working again, still not living her life. One day she is struck by lightning. This event leads her to meeting fellow strike victims and eventually "lazurus jones" a man who is fire inside and has faced death having died for a time after being struck, even just his touch burns and blisters the skin. At first I thought this book was quite depressing, all the talk of death and just being not happy with life. It is about a journey though, of realizing who you are who you are becoming. The story takes facts and usage of fairy tales to show there are different aspect of life, different points of view. I didn't want to like this book, but in the end I did.