So Ivey's decision to re-imagine the folk tale as a lengthier work – and at nearly 400 pages, this is no slim volume – feels ambitious, risky. We find ourselves leaning in as if over a dark, deep pool in which we can make out not only the brilliant images of the story but also, dimly, our own wavering reflections. Far from compromising a fairy tale's charm, this requirement enhances readers' involvement. It's up to readers, drawing upon our own experiences and imaginations, to fill in the shades of meaning, to flesh out the sparely etched shapes. In their symbol-laden concision, fairy tales contain the code but not the concoction, the blueprint but not the building. Something fairy tales don't typically offer is what Ian McEwan has called the 'luxury of psychology' afforded by novels. From this kernel, Ivey cultivates an extended saga of loss, longing and – more interesting – the countervailing desires we may all harbour for both wildness and domesticity. The Snow Child, owes much to the conventions of fairy tales, beginning with its premise, borrowed from a traditional Russian folk tale: A childless man and woman build a child out of snow the next day a mysterious girl appears, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the figure they moulded the night before. Every fairy tale comes with an implicit covenant: It promises to charm, and we pledge our willingness to be bemused, perhaps unsettled. We don't expect its characters to behave quite like real people, nor do we not expect the story to explain itself rationally or resolve its mysteries completely.

They prick like thorns at the flesh, ring out like an ax striking wood. Within a circumscribed field of prose, concrete details glisten like beads of blood on white muslin. The greater part of a fairy tale's power resides in its brevity.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey