IPA: Snowmen

And here the book swings back into weird/fantasy/magical realism mode with a great story about a few days in winter. There's admittedly not much in the way of a plot here. Snow falls one day in the hometown of the narrator, who is a young boy. He heads out with his friends to play in the snow. Soon they encounter some very intricate snowmen. They wander around some more, and then go back outside day after day to see the new variations in snowmen. The snow figures become ever more fanciful: people in complicated scenes, animals, plants, mythical beasties. Of course, these are all pretty much figures it is impossible to make with snow, but I found it only added to the sense of the wondrous that Millhauser is after in the story.