Thursday, August 15, 2013

Case Study No. 0924: The Ice Queen

Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman.wmv
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Added: 3 years ago
From: LissieKoreanBaby
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Be careful of what you wish for ...
"This happened when I was 8"

It may come true ...

Lightning strikes ...
Changing her whole life

A girl who feels cold
Unknown girl ... cold inside and out

A boy who is always hot
Lazarus Jones ... Burns your hand if you touch him

They starting dating ...
But they have problems

Florida Beach
Moved their to make a new start

That's when truth ...
Reveals itself

The Ice Queen
by Alice Hoffman

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From amazon.com:

The Ice Queen: A Novel
Alice Hoffman (Author)
Publication Date: January 3, 2006

Be careful what you wish for. A small town librarian lives a quiet life without much excitement. One day, she mutters and idle wish and, while standing in her house, is struck by lightning. But instead of ending her life, this cataclysmic event sparks it into a new beginning. She goes in search of Lazarus Jones, a fellow survivor who was struck dead, then simply got up and walked away. Perhaps this stranger who has seen death face to face can teach her to live without fear. When she finds himhe is opposite, a burning man whose breath can boil water and whose touch scorches.

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From powells.com:

As an eight-year-old, the unnamed narrator makes a terrible wish that comes true; remorseful for the next 30 years, she shuts down emotionally to become a self-proclaimed ice queen. Unlike her brother, Ned, who relies on logic, math and science to make sense of the world, the loner librarian fears the chaotic randomness of existence and is obsessed by death.

Then lightning strikes, literally. In a flash, she's jolted out of her rut, noticing for the first time all that she's been taking for granted—even the color red, which after the strike she can no longer see: "How could I have been so stupid to ignore everything I'd had in my life? The color red alone was worth kingdoms."

The novel turns sultry when the slowly melting ice queen seeks out reclusive Lazarus Jones, a fellow lightning survivor who came back to life after 40 minutes of death: "I wanted a man like that, one it was impossible to kill, who wouldn't flinch if you wished him dead."

Blanketed in prose that has never been dreamier and gloriously vivid imagery, this life-affirming fable is ripe with Hoffman's trademark symbolism and magic, but with a steelier edge: "Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws."

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From reviewsofbooks.com:

The Ice Queen refers to the unnamed protagonist in Alice Hoffman's novel, a New Jersey librarian who carries a scarred past and prefers books to people. She wishes to be struck by lightning, and when it happens, it damages her so that her heart beats slower and she can longer see the color red. She moves to Florida to be closer to her brother, a meteorologist who studies lightning. She joins a study of lightning-strike survivors, and feels drawn to Lazarus Jones, who was dead for 40 minutes after his lightning strike. Lazarus is her opposite, he only feels heat and can burn with just a touch. They begin a torrid after, her ice with his heat, and in the process they must deal with the secrets in their past.

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From google.com:

The library where I found myself employed was underfunded: there was one other librarian, Frances York, who had worked at the same post for forty years and whose eyesight was now failing - hence my job. Untrustworthy as I might be, I was to be her eyes.

This is what I saw: Most of the shelves were empty. Budget cuts. Public's lack of interest. I had more books packed in cartons and left in storage in New Jersey than the Orlon Public Library had in its entirety. There were no computers available to the patrons, only one ancient word processor at the desk, and an old-fashioned card catalog was still in use. As for the reference department, there didn't seem to be one. After several weeks at work, there'd been only three calls of any kind: two concerning the proper use of fertilizer, and a third from a second-grader wanting to know what medical school Dr. Seuss had gone to. Maybe I should have lied to my young caller, but it wasn't in my nature to do so. When I told her that her favorite author wasn't a doctor, that in fact his last name wasn't even Seuss, she hung up on me. I suppose no one had told her before that she mustn't trust words, not even the ones in books.

Because we were a college town, the students at Orlon had their own hightech facility, so our little building was all but invisible to them. And as our budget didn't allow the purchase of any new editions, even the local folks stayed away. The only weekly activity was the nursery-school reading club, but that group was nearly disbanded after I read "The Goose Girl," a tale in which a truth-teller, a beloved, loyal horse named Falada, continues to speak long after his severed head is mounted on the wall. Frances took back the position of reader, even though she was nearly blind and had to hold a book right up to her face to make out the story. Frances was polite about my removal, and I understood. Death was my talent, not lively toddlers. I gratefully relinquished the nursery group, happy enough to avoid the rush of noisy little creatures on Thursday afternoons.

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