Eowyn Ivey
Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey blends magic and realism against the backdrop of the Alaskan wilderness. The narrative opens with Birdie and her six-year-old daughter, Emaleen. Birdie is restless and longs to escape her humdrum life of working in a bar. When the opportunity presents itself to move to a remote cabin in the wilderness with a mysterious and reclusive man named Arthur, Birdie seizes it and takes Emaleen with her.
Initially, mother and daughter enjoy the freedom of living off the grid. They develop a routine, adjusting to cabin life without electricity or running water. But as time passes and the novelty wears off, their ostensibly idyllic life becomes increasingly precarious. To complicate matters, Arthur remains elusive. He harbors a dark secret about his origins. He disappears, sometimes for days at a time, and is non-communicative about where he has been. His only instruction to Birdie is to leave him alone. Meanwhile, Emaleen discovers his secret but withholds the information from her mother until it is too late.
The novel’s strength lies in Ivey’s ability to immerse the reader in the pristine Alaskan wilderness. She captures the raw beauty of the Alaskan flora and fauna, as well as its potential for danger from wild animals. But the narrative and its execution are disappointing. The lackluster characters are underdeveloped and uninteresting. Birdie is too quick to rush off to the wilderness with a man she barely knows, putting her daughter at risk. Emaleen’s voice as a six-year-old is irritating and contrived. Arthur, supposedly a dark, brooding, romantic male character, comes across as a lumbering idiot. And the elements of magical realism fall short. Magical realism should infuse the narrative as a whole to be effective. Here, it is exclusively contained in the person of an uninspiring Arthur.
I enjoyed Ivey’s The Snow Child and To the Bright Edge of the World. But this book just wasn’t for me.