Book Review 6 of 52: The Ice Storm by Rick Moody

First off, for those of you who twitter you can find me at twitter.com/toleary.

Now the Ice Storm is a day in the life of two families during a rather nasty ice storm during 1973. There are the Williams and the Hoods who are the main family. There's Ben Hood, the father, who is having an affair with Janey Williams. His wife Elena tries to stay unaware of the adultery but can't seem to shake it. Wendy Hood experiments sexually with Mickey and Sandy Williams, while Paul Hood is off in the city trying to make the last train to New Canaan while dealing with his own adolescent problems.

The big theme of the book, at least from what I got, is the breakdown of the American family. Ben Hood, who is described as a rather unattractive man, has cheated on his wife multiple times. It's not that his wife is unattractive, actually quite the opposite, it's just that he's a lousy human being, a lousy father, and a lousy husband. Elena turns a blind eye to it but confronts her husband before going to a neighborhood party which turns out to be a swingers party. Her husband wants to stay, mostly because his mistress is there. Elena changes her mind and stays at the party to play on her husband's turf and see what all the fuss is about and finally let go and stop letting Ben ruin her life.

Wendy is attracted to Mickey Williams, and his younger brother Sandy. She experiments with both of them sexually, and even recounts experimenting with one of the neighborhood girls. A lot of her story deals with sexual and gender identity, especially in the 70's where her father is having an affair, the neighborhood parents are swapping husbands and wives for the night and sex seems to be heavy in the air.

Paul is in the city with his crush Libbets and a mutual friend of theirs. His story deals with a lot of adolescent identity and unrequited romantic feelings. He needs to catch the train home but keeps putting it off in a futile pursuit of Libbets who proclaims her friendly love of him while he ponders the question, "What does that even mean?"

The Hood family make up the four narrators of the novel going from one to another. Some stories are stronger than others. Ben's story is rather strong, going between his conflicting emotions about family and love. Elena's kind of falls apart as she never really rises above being the cheated woman as her own attempt at cheating falls apart. Wendy's is probably the strongest of all as her search for identity leads her to Mickey and Sandy, and eventually to a surprise ending that shapes her character in the end.

Paul is the wildcard character as his story isn't directly related to anyone's as he doesn't interact with any of the other main characters until the very end of the story, but it holds together as a simple boy likes girl, girl loves boy as a friend, story.

In the end it all weaves together nicely, especially since I have a rather distaste for the day-in-the-life gimmick. The characters are strong, the dialogue and writing are top notch which is a rather big change especially considering the last Rick Moody book I reviewed was a failure on almost every level. One thing you want to consider though is that this is not a happy book. There is not a happy ending. It's just a peek into the live of some severely screwed up and confused people. Think of it like someone wrote a story about your family reunion, except probably not as screwed up, maybe.

Now there's supposed to be a movie version that came out in 1997. I never heard of it but I think I'm going to have to check it out to see how Ang Lee handled the material. We know he doesn't shy away from sexual material and the cast seems pretty solid, I may just have to track this one down.

I've got two more Moody books to read once I finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but I'm a little reserved as this one set the bar pretty high after the last one.