The Ice Queen
Alice Hoffman
(Reviewer - Dr. Alma Bond)
2005 Little Brown & Co
ISBN: 0316058599

A woman whose wishes come true struggles with the aftermath of being struck by lightning.

That wasn't her first wish, that one killed her mother. For 30 years she's lived a shut down life, keeping other people at a distance. She even believes she wants it that way. Then one day she utters her second idle wish, &, while standing in her house, is struck by lightning.

Instead of ending her life, this cataclysmic event sparks a strange & powerful new beginning. After the lightning strike, she feels frozen from the inside out, & everything red looks colorless as snow. She meets a fellow victim of lightning, who experienced quite different results. While she felt frozen solid, he was a raging furnace who can make love only in a freezing river or a tub filled with ice. An obsessive love affair between them begins, which changes both their lives.

Sr. Associate Reviewer Dr. Alma H. Bond writes:

“Be careful what you wish for,” the eight-year-old heroine of The Ice Queen says. She learned it the hard way, when a casual wish she made ruined her life. As her mother was going off in her car to celebrate her birthday with friends, the girl told her straight to her face, “I wish I would never see you again” (p. 6). Unfortunately, her wish came true. Her mother was in a car accident, & never reached the party.

Later in her life, the girl made another wish, that she would be struck by lightning. Her brother Ned tried to talk her out of it, telling her “Like Hell you do. You have no idea of the damage that can be done.” (p. 18). But it was too late. She had already made the wish.

One of the most interesting parts of this well-researched book is the description Hoffman gives of these damages. I always knew lightning could kill, but never had any idea of the terrible & unique physical catastrophes it can bring about short of death. The victim in the book can't move her left side, her heart has been affected, & there is neurological damage. She feels that her very essence, her inner self has disappeared. Among more serious injuries, everything colored red appears as a dull gray. Red Jello looks to her the color of stones, & a red-headed nurse seems to have long white hair. Once she thought she bought a white dress, & didn't realize it was bright red until some men hanging out at a gas station whistled at her. This deficit lasts until she was well on the way to recovery. Nor can she articulate the strangeness of her pain, “it was the pain of nothingness.” (p.29). To demonstrate the degree of her distress to her doctor, who thought she was doing well, she thrusts her hand through a window pane, saying, “I had just wanted to get my point across... Did I have to spell it out for him?” (p. 30).

How are lightning & magic different? is a favorite joke of meteorologists. The answer is that magic makes sense, while lightning is random & unpredictable. It can be tiny as a bean, big as a house, noisy or silent, musty or clear, & of any color. One man who had been struck was wearing a ring & a watch. Both pieces of jewelry left deep indentations in his skin, as though he had been branded by the heated metal. “Too bad the watch doesn't tell time,” he jokes. Worst of all, lightning slips right through the molecules that make up glass, so that one is never completely safe from it. It reaches 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, over five times the heat of the Sun. It can be a hundred miles long, or thin as a man's little finger. It has strange effects, so that trees which have been hit may seem unhurt, but suddenly will wither months later. Some people are unaffected & even able to finish their golf game after being struck, while the lives of others are forever ruined.

Another possible strange effect is the theory of suspended animation. Although unproven, it states that because lightning is capable of shutting off the systemic & cerebral metabolism of a victim, much like a short circuit, a person could be officially dead for a long time & then brought back to life. A man in the book called the Dragon was thought to have been killed twice by lightning & then revived, after forty minutes without a heartbeat or pulse. Five feet ten inches tall when he was struck, the lightning stretched him to six feet. He radiated so much heat that he could eat only cold food, as anything raw became cooked as he swallowed. Another victim couldn't stay awake, or tell the difference between dream & reality.

Alice Hoffman's heroine seeks out a fellow victim of lightning, who turns out to be her exact opposite in that his breath can boil water & his touch scorch. A love affair develops. She becomes The Ice Queen who wants to be burned alive. In that way she hopes to find real treasure, “the center of every story, the real truth she is seeking” (p. 108). The resolution of the love affair helps her accept reality & come to terms with the loss of her mother.

Alice Hoffman is a fine writer, who is often funny, insightful, & knowledgeable. The Ice Queen, like all her other books, is recommended for those who like a good read & will not settle for anything less than originality.

More from Alice Hoffman:
Blackbird House
Practical Magic
The Probable Future
Seventh Heaven
Fortune’s Daughter & many more including six children's books.
(05/22/05)

Dr. Alma Bond
2005©Alma Bond
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Reviewer's Bio:
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of ten published books, including:
The Deadly Jigsaw Puzzle;
The Tree That Could Fly;
Tales Of Psychology (2005);
I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde (2000);
The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel (1998);
On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery (1994);
Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1998);
Profiles of Key West (1996).

She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age Is A Terminal Illness, as an audio book.

She is also the author of a just published children's picture book called The Tree That Could Fly.

Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.