Alice Hoffman

Fiction 2005/ 331 pages

The Ice Queen seems like an intriguing story, but then, near the end of it, the depth of the story and the characters and their relationships really come to fruition.  I cried in the closing pages.

The ice queen herself is the narrator, and we never know her name in this first-person novel.  She is struck by lightning at her home in New Jersey and turns cold.  I don’t mean emotionally (though that is a battle she faces, too), but the “effects” of the lightning strike on her include the loss of mobility on her left side, an inability to see the color red, and a body that is ice cold, that needs to take ice baths.

Afterwards, her brother Ned convinces her to move to Florida which, as it turns out, is the lightning-strike capital of the country, and she enters a study of lightning-strike survivors.  There she meets her friend Remy and her lover Lazarus (his real name is Seth, but after being dead for nearly an hour after his unique lightning strike, he earns a new nickname). Lazarus has a variety of different “effects,” but he is in many ways the opposite of our woman.  He is literally burning hot.  Sex happens in a bathtub of ice, and ice is necessary to cool off her intimate parts afterwards.

There is also some magic in the book, as the main character believes she has the power to wish something into existence.  This is solidly formed in her when, as a child of 8, she, in anger, wishes that her mother will never come back when mom goes out to celebrate her birthday, and her wish comes true.

The description of lightning strike “effects” is fascinating.  There are many different types of strikes, it turns out, which have many different effects on the victim’s body and psyche.  We follow the narrator’s story into her partial recovery, as well as what happens to Remy and Lazarus.  I was surprised at how much, near the end, we follow the narrator’s relationship with her brother Ned and sister-in-law Nina, as the narrator finally learns what love really is.

This is an odd book, and I am having trouble both rating it and deciding whether or not to recommend it.  It is an engaging read … I read it quickly.  I have landed on recommending it, knowing it is an unusual read.

April 2025