On the outset, Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm appears to be a Generation X era relic about what it was like to grow up in the 1970’s. Any serious reader has probably read at least one of these type of stories before; stories chock full of ironic kitsch and facile observations on how screwed up the Me generation were. At the beginning of the novel, Moody lives up to that description, as he sloshes the kitsch with a ladle, with lists of brand names, pop songs, and other period icons so that you can be sure that he really remembers 1973. However, this is not a nostalgia trip. What starts as a dark comedy deepens into suburban tragedy. All of the characters are in various states of malaise, and Moody resists caricature. They are damaged human beings, full of flaws and deceptions. The Hood family live in a WASP suburban enclave called New Canaan, which is beautiful on the surface, but is seething underneath with cultural upheaval. The Watergate scandal is on the television every night, and the sexual revolution is creeping into the suburbs. Patriarch Ben Hood is self-absorbed in his own depression, and having an affair with a neighbor. Wife and mother Elena Hood is equally self-absorbed, and stews in her own self-loathing. Their daughter, Wendy, throws herself into sexual experimentation and drugs to escape the stultifying atmosphere, and son Paul takes refuge reading comic books. Life goes on the same rut, but a storm is on the horizon, a beautiful but deadly ice storm that forces everyone together, and all of his or her deceptions trigger a familial meltdown.Moody deftly orchestrates these deceptions, as the characters alternately ignore, circle, and confront each other. Adding to the orchestrations is the narration from four different perspectives, each of them a member of the two families affected by Ben’s affair, who are promoting their own opinion and views of the ensuing events that arise throughout the novel. Three of the Hoods run away from their malaise by going to bed with members of the family next door, then get caught and try to deny it, while accusing the others. Most of these encounters are darkly funny, but the eventual plot twists change the tone from humorous to dead serious. The storm is always in the horizon, but once it arrives to New Canaan, the emotional wounds the characters have hidden come boiling to the surface, and before the night is over, somebody’s child dies. The cultural references also take on a much heavier resonance as the mood darkens. One of the most poignant uses is when Wendy turns up A Charlie Brown Christmas on the television to drown out the noise of her parents arguing. The mix of pop culture and emotional violence brings home the general atmosphere of a society disillusioned by Nixon, and turned on by the sexual revolution.By the end, Moody's tone has turned alternately mournful and stern. The adults are three dimensional, and all too human, but Moody does not let them off the hook for their bad behavior. The characters are adrift without a moral compass as the Watergate scandal drones on in the background. However, Moody still makes the characters sympathetic, precisely because they are all too human. He manages to frequently evoke both tones in his prose, as in the following: “ . . . you could pay Arthur Janov to teach you to scream . . . learn a prayer or a mantra . . . but that was the best you could probably do. You were stuck.” That sentence probably sums up Moody’s 70’s experience, and overall, The Ice Storm is a striking generational flipside to the works of Cheever and Updike.
Favorite line: She knew that if she ever suffered a real and debilitating mental illness, its onset would not be the result of a failed marriage or because of twentieth-century spiritual impoverishment; it would be caused instead by these details, by a pen mark on the designer pantsuit she'd bought for the holidays, by the slight warp in her Paul Simon album, or by the acrid taste of old ice cubes. These small things led to a bottomless pit of loneliness beside which even Cambodia paled.The Ice Storm tells the story of the Hood family of New Canaan, Connecticut in the days following Thanksgiving, 1973. As an ice storm descends on their idyllic community the Hood family begins to unravel along with their neighbors the Williamses until they are engulfed in their own personal ice storm.SPOILERSI liked this book although one does grow weary of reading about the upper class and their alcoholism, adultery, and depression. This is not a new theme. However, setting it 1973 during the sexual revolution and the last days of Nixon was intriguing. I really didn't like any of the adult characters (are you supposed to?) But by the end I did feel for Janey and Elena and their circumstances. Both were wed to men who they didn't really love but who could provide - what any girl of the 1950s was supposed to do. Elena's sad childhood added to my compassion for her. But - why didn't they see what they were doing to their children??? Wendy, Paul, Mikey and Sandy were truly done a disservice by their parents. They left those kids to their own devices for so long and they were surprised by their actions? If you leave your kids alone for the night to attend a spouse swapping party don't be surprised if you come home to find the kids have done some experimenting of their own. And poor Paul waiting a the train station because his parents are too wrapped up in their own mess to remember him. Rick Moody should write a follow up to this novel about these children in twenty years or so - although I think we might just be reading about the myriad of ways they are screwing up their own children. Here is the rundown: What I didn't like 1) These were the most sex-crazed people I have ever read about. And pretty much every bit of it was depressing. I don't necessarily thing Moody is wrong for writing them this way - it just didn't make for a pleasant reading experience. 2) I really liked the Ben then Wendy then Elena then Paul point of view chapters but Moody kind of dropped that theme at the end. 3) I had a hard time believing any of these characters were out walking around during the middle of an ice storm. What I did like:1) The feel of the book was very seventies. Just thinking about reading it makes me feel all brown and orange.2) Paul's obsession with the Fantastic Four.3) Libbets Casey - she seemed a bit more genuine than any of the other characters - then again she was not a member of the troubled Hood family.4) That the entire story full of deeply troubled people takes place within walking distance of a mental health facility that none of them would ever walk into.This is a great book to read if you want a birds-eye view of someone else's train-wreck of a family. I think gossips might enjoy this. I can't say I enjoyed reading it but I can appreciate Moody's writing - and it made me appreciate my own life.
What do You think about The Ice Storm (2002)?
This is a book about sexual depravity and complete isolation in a crowded room, so to speak. I really wanted to love this book. Perhaps, in another life or at a different time in my life, I might have. I just could not. I choose this book because I felt that being born and raised in Connecticut and growing up in the seventies, I might've been able to relate to it somehow but, nope...I couldn't relate to any of it. Probably because I grew up on the other side of the state. The blue-collar side of CT, I did not know any WASP's and the only parties my mother went to were Tupperware or Princess House crystal parties. Well, having said all that, Moody is a witty writer and has incredibly gifted logic however, he goes off on unbearably long tangents that left me bleary-eyed and frankly quite exhausted. Every character is superbly flawed and isolated and Moody definitely creates a cold atmosphere making the setting and literal climate of the book, spot on. I didn't hate it. I certainly didn't love it.
—Deana
The American literati bristled last year when one of the Nobel Prize bigwigs said the country’s writers were too entangled with their own mass culture to get close to a new Nobel in Literature. I don’t think that’s entirely true, but after reading "The Ice Storm" I have to say I suspect the Swedish bigwig was reading Rick Moody. Not that I didn’t like the book. But having been alive and fully conscious in the 1970’s, I knew the dozens of TV shows and pop songs Moody referenced. To be honest, the ‘70’s have always struck me as somewhat grotesque, and now I’m sure. I also dislike the state of Connecticut. Yes, unhappy marriages and adolescent anxiety are universals, but would you be able to enjoy this book if you weren’t of a certain age, and accidentally American? I’d be interested to know. I guess you could accuse Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” of the same kind of thing, but its sinister appeal is wider and it is less anchored to American icons, in my opinion. Considering the number of hard-ons I had to read to the end in "The Ice Storm," I was glad I was born a girl and not a boy. Anyway, the writing is good, the story has its hooks and the last 85 pages or so of this book were just terrific. Does that make it worth it? Yes, though I could imagine a lot of non-North Americans getting frustrated by the cultural allusions.My step-mother tells me to try "Purple America," and I’m going to think about that.
—S.
I remember hating this book when I read it, and I don't usually hate books. It was part of my honors in creative writing group study--my two partners and I each had to assign each other reading related to what we were writing. I read it over Thanksgiving break and found so depressing I could barely stand to keep reading--maybe it was that it takes place where I grew up. When we discussed it after the break, I was surprised to hear they thought the book was funny. Odd how the same book can be interpreted in such different ways.
—Christina
