Cynthia Zarin is a talented writer. Her prose and ability with words are the main reasons I kept coming back to this book. However, the structure of this story was hard to follow and the reader got no breaks in between, you needed to get it all at once.

Three stars because this is a very creative and ambitious novel, the writing is gorgeous, and there are brief snatches of clarity to be found while reading that are rewarding. But I think the overall execution was entirely too confusing for me, making it very difficult to follow what was happening. As a result, I couldn’t understand who the characters were in of themselves and each other, so I didn’t care much about their relationship. The pieces of commentary on various forms of media interspersed in the story were interesting at first. Still, they became tedious to follow and disrupted any sense of chronology I tried to form.

I'd seen reviews saying this was a little too complicated for most to follow, and I felt myself rise in indignant belief that I could be one of the few. But lol I'm too dumb and impatient to really enjoy this and that is 100 percent on me. Kudos to this great poet **clap emoji**

Both baffling and beautiful, this is a challenge to follow but worthy of your time if you are a fan of experimental fiction. Cynthia is sitting in the snow waiting for a phone call from Alastair and thinking about her life. It's non linear, the Snow Queen is recounted, and it's not always clear what's happening. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. Definitely not for everyone but intriguing.

I love Cynthis Zarin’s work; she’s an incredible poet, and this transfers to her prose, which is lyrical and lush and atmospheric. As a result, this book is all of those things by virtue of its writing. The structure is fascinating—but nearly impossible to follow. There are no chapters or breaks, and the chronology is completely fractured. We are tentatively following the love story of Caroline and Alistair across their whole lives, but also we are examining the relationship between the narrator and the reader, and also delving into various plays, fairy tales, novels, songs, movies, etc. It reads like a novel that was cut up, mixed around, and spliced with a collection of essays.

Three stars because this is obviously a very creative and ambitious novel, the writing is gorgeous, and there are brief snatches of clarity to be found while reading that are rewarding. But I think the overall execution was entirely too confusing for me, making it very difficult to follow what was happening. As a result, I couldn’t get a sense of who the characters were in of themselves and to each other, and so I didn’t care much about their relationship. The pieces of commentary on various forms of media interspersed in the story were interesting at first, but they became tedious to follow and disrupted any sense of chronology I tried to form.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. Caroline is sitting on a bench in Central Park as it begins to snow. She’s waiting for a call from Alastair, a boy she’s know for over thirty years. He’s not the love of her life, but she’s always had strong and confusing feelings about him as they have drifted in and out of each other’s lives. As she sits and waits for the call, so much of her life passes through her mind. Alastair, her husbands and children, her parents, but also plays she’s seen, poetry that’s moved her and lines from movies that you come back to over and over again, with a children’s fairy tale running throughout this slim novel.