The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Summary:
"A solitary New Jersey librarian whose favorite book is a guide to suicide methods is struck by lightning in Alice Hoffman's superb novel, The Ice Queen. Orphaned at the age of eight after angrily wishing she would never see her mother again, our heroine found herself frozen emotionally: "I was the child who stomped her feet and made a single wish and in so doing ended the whole world‹my world, at any rate." Her brother Ned solved the pain of their mother's death by becoming a meteorologist: applying reason and logic to bad weather. Eventually, he invites our heroine to move down to Florida, where he teaches at a university. Here, while trying to swat a fly, she is struck by lightning (the resulting neurological damage includes an inability to see the color red). Orlon County turns out to receive two thirds of all the lightning strikes in Florida each year, and our heroine soon becomes drawn into the mysteries of lightning: the withering of trees and landscape near a strike, the medical traumas and odd new abilities of victims, the myths of renewal. Although a recluse, she becomes fascinated by a legendary local farmer nicknamed Lazarus Jones, said to have beaten death after a lightning strike: to have seen the other side and come back. The burning match to her cool reserve--her personal unguided tour through Hades--Lazarus will prove to be the talisman that restores her to girlhood innocence and possibility." -Goodreads.com

My quick Review:
It started off seriously depressing and graduated into a sense of happiness. The writing style didn't appeal to me as it seemed a bit bland and monotonous, but the character was interesting in the way that she viewed herself, others and life in general. The symbolism references of her life, butterflies and the chaos theory was beautiful, and perhaps this plot contributed towards her monotonous poetic-like writing style.

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Quotes:
"I knew the power of a single wish, after all. Invisible and inevitable in its effect, like a butterfly that beats its wings in one corner of the globe and with that single action changes the weather halfway across the world. Chaos theory, my brother had informed me, was based on the mathematical theorem that suggests that the tiniest change affects everything, no matter how distant, including the weather. My brother could call it whatever he wanted to; it was just fate to me." (11)

"Love was like rain: it turned to ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search." (66)

"Instead of going home, I drove to the library. To hell with human beings. I'd always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood." (101)

Hardcover, 211 pages

Published July 1st 2009 by Little, Brown and Company (first published April 15th 2005)