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The Ice Storm
The year is 1973. As a freak winter storm bears down on an exclusive, affluent suburb in Connecticut, cars skid out of control, men and women swap partners, and their children experiment with sex, drugs, and even suicide. Here two families, the Hoods and the Williamses, come face-to-face with the seething emotions behind the well-clipped lawns of their lives - in a novel widely hailed as a funny, acerbic, and moving hymn to a dazed and confused era of American life.
305 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
About the author
Rick Moody
147 books330 followersRick Moody (born Hiram Frederick Moody, III on October 18, 1961, New York City), is an American novelist and short story writer best known for The Ice Storm (1994), a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, which brought widespread acclaim, and became a bestseller; it was later made into a feature film.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 461 reviews
January 23, 2020
Reading Road Trip 2020
Current location: Connecticut
No one believes in the weather anymore.
As I entered the state of Connecticut, the weather report was bad. The entire region was about to experience a thirty year storm, a deadly combination of sleet then snow then freezing temperatures that would top off the roads like popsicles. Residents and drivers were cautioned to stay home, so I promptly pulled into the nearest hotel to hunker down with my blanket and my book.
Unfortunately, the residents of New Canaan were not as cautious as I was.
The New Canaanites don't believe much in things like weather reports. They are, truth be told, children posturing as adults. They would no sooner heed a weather warning than they would a cautionary tale about the overuse of alcohol.
They may work at lucrative jobs, belong to country clubs and have children that attend fancy boarding schools, but they don't have a damn thing figured out.
Overall, happiness seems to elude the residents of this affluent town, especially when it comes to family life and marriage. It seems that the less simple our needs, the more complex we become, and these parents and their prepubescent and teen children are one hot mess, despite the ice storm which surrounds them.
And the word prepubescent is significant here, possibly more so than in any other town I've ever encountered. The young residents featured here are almost obsessed with a mutual loss of innocence. Despite claims from the Guardian that this is “one of the wittiest books about family life ever written,” I found not one event in New Canaan funny. Not one. I took the misery of these suffering humans quite seriously.
As I finished my book, I could see, from the hotel window, that the storm had finally subsided. I ventured out of my room to behold a fairy tale setting of crystallized trees, frosted windows and ice palaces where normal suburban homes had once stood. It was all a sparkling feast for my eyes, but I knew, after my read, that things were only beautiful on the outside.
Just like the people of New Canaan.
Next stop: Vermont
Current location: Connecticut
No one believes in the weather anymore.
As I entered the state of Connecticut, the weather report was bad. The entire region was about to experience a thirty year storm, a deadly combination of sleet then snow then freezing temperatures that would top off the roads like popsicles. Residents and drivers were cautioned to stay home, so I promptly pulled into the nearest hotel to hunker down with my blanket and my book.
Unfortunately, the residents of New Canaan were not as cautious as I was.
The New Canaanites don't believe much in things like weather reports. They are, truth be told, children posturing as adults. They would no sooner heed a weather warning than they would a cautionary tale about the overuse of alcohol.
They may work at lucrative jobs, belong to country clubs and have children that attend fancy boarding schools, but they don't have a damn thing figured out.
Overall, happiness seems to elude the residents of this affluent town, especially when it comes to family life and marriage. It seems that the less simple our needs, the more complex we become, and these parents and their prepubescent and teen children are one hot mess, despite the ice storm which surrounds them.
And the word prepubescent is significant here, possibly more so than in any other town I've ever encountered. The young residents featured here are almost obsessed with a mutual loss of innocence. Despite claims from the Guardian that this is “one of the wittiest books about family life ever written,” I found not one event in New Canaan funny. Not one. I took the misery of these suffering humans quite seriously.
As I finished my book, I could see, from the hotel window, that the storm had finally subsided. I ventured out of my room to behold a fairy tale setting of crystallized trees, frosted windows and ice palaces where normal suburban homes had once stood. It was all a sparkling feast for my eyes, but I knew, after my read, that things were only beautiful on the outside.
Just like the people of New Canaan.
Next stop: Vermont
December 31, 2019
It tries hard to be clever but the language carries a heavy & pompous aroma. Instead of it being cold, sad and brilliant, it is too insider-y, too ordinary a tale and almost overly faulty. It was written... why? That countless times the author tries to tie in the family drama with the strangeness of the times (1973), & fails, pretty much destroys its entire purpose, whatever that may have been and was not.
Yes, there is a tragedy (and when it comes to these dramadies, when doesn't that happen?) involving the death of a son. The son with an empty brain, just like the parents. What a waste in that the climax means less than what it is. There is retribution for the sins of the adults and this carries on to the sexual confusion of the offspring. The offspring are as advanced on this very annoying topic, and the adults are in absolute retrograde. There is a soliloquy of why the adults comport themselves the way they do in silly antirepressive verve. Sad to be so self-aware and yet do nothing about it. This could have been the Death of the Norman Rockwell's Brand "Ideal" Novel of the decade, but it just pretends to be as important.
I did like the touches of the literally broken family with the invisible cancer as both homes (the Hoods' and Williamses) leak after the pipes have been frozen due to the titular storm. Here is a symbolic gesture indicative of a sexually-delayed mentality, a self-imposed sexual deficiency. Everyone is confused, conceited. & somehow I expected better.
P.S. Some idiot in the novel has the tenacity to ask if the "new film" (opened that historical date of 12/26/73), based on a possessed child & the Catholic church, will amount to anything. I gasped when the losers say it wouldn't amount to a thing. I was SOO lost after that. Wish this had been better!
Yes, there is a tragedy (and when it comes to these dramadies, when doesn't that happen?) involving the death of a son. The son with an empty brain, just like the parents. What a waste in that the climax means less than what it is. There is retribution for the sins of the adults and this carries on to the sexual confusion of the offspring. The offspring are as advanced on this very annoying topic, and the adults are in absolute retrograde. There is a soliloquy of why the adults comport themselves the way they do in silly antirepressive verve. Sad to be so self-aware and yet do nothing about it. This could have been the Death of the Norman Rockwell's Brand "Ideal" Novel of the decade, but it just pretends to be as important.
I did like the touches of the literally broken family with the invisible cancer as both homes (the Hoods' and Williamses) leak after the pipes have been frozen due to the titular storm. Here is a symbolic gesture indicative of a sexually-delayed mentality, a self-imposed sexual deficiency. Everyone is confused, conceited. & somehow I expected better.
P.S. Some idiot in the novel has the tenacity to ask if the "new film" (opened that historical date of 12/26/73), based on a possessed child & the Catholic church, will amount to anything. I gasped when the losers say it wouldn't amount to a thing. I was SOO lost after that. Wish this had been better!
October 23, 2013
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.
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.
November 17, 2013
Fucking family. Feeble and forlorn and floundering and foolish and frustrating and functional and sad, sad. Fucking family. Fiend or foe.
Likely Ang Lee's film remains superior. The struggle is apparent here. One trying to rationalize one's upbringing is always a fool's errand. Moody appears to halt before the warmth. He's perhaps too keen to be clinical.
Likely Ang Lee's film remains superior. The struggle is apparent here. One trying to rationalize one's upbringing is always a fool's errand. Moody appears to halt before the warmth. He's perhaps too keen to be clinical.
February 20, 2017
An exuberant and dark novel that makes you both laugh and hold your stomach at the detailed and nauseating portrayals of the shame of youth and family. No one is safe in this book, and no one is good. Everything is tinged with either a rot that is unredeemable or a rot that is still in its seedling state. The children will be as rotten as the parents, and the parents seem beyond hope. The culture of the town is hopeless and the only thing that makes it at all uplifting is the sense that this era is passed, and that these experiences are not your own. Something about the father with the mouth full of canker sores says it all - his rot is at once personal and biological, a matter of destiny.
So it is not, in many ways, a pleasant book to read. But it is funny, and the sentences are overwritten in a way that I very much enjoy. There is an excess of excess in the prose, which is a rare thing in this era of the pretense of minimalism. He is as exuberant about comics and history and television and the styles of the seventies as he is about shame, and these details help to defray the darkness of the plot and the characters. Did I enjoy it? I read it very quickly. I think I enjoyed it. But it might not have made me a happier person in general; is literature supposed to do that?
So it is not, in many ways, a pleasant book to read. But it is funny, and the sentences are overwritten in a way that I very much enjoy. There is an excess of excess in the prose, which is a rare thing in this era of the pretense of minimalism. He is as exuberant about comics and history and television and the styles of the seventies as he is about shame, and these details help to defray the darkness of the plot and the characters. Did I enjoy it? I read it very quickly. I think I enjoyed it. But it might not have made me a happier person in general; is literature supposed to do that?
August 16, 2016
Let's play Literary Key Party!
Here's how it goes: everyone plays an author, and then you pick another author's keys and you have to write your story in their style!
For example, if I'm John Fowles and I end up with Jane Austen's keys, I might say
Ladies*
Jane Austen
Flannery O'Connor
Dorothy Parker
Ayn Rand
Carolyn Keene
Virginia Woolf
Gentlemen
Henry Miller
Charles Dickens
Jack Kerouac
Vlad Nabokov
Dashiell Hammett
Thomas Pynchon
* Not that you have to divvy it up by ladies and gentlemen, of course. You do your thing. It's the laziest way to divide into two groups but, like...heteronormativity is wack, kids! Which, honestly, this is sortof the problem with key parties in general. In our immediate circle is one gay couple and they're always so bored. The rest of us are fine with it - you have no idea how attractive they both are, it's ridiculous - but that doesn't really help them much.
Anyway, so have fun with that game at your next weird sex party; it will probably make it more fun than this book, in which not a lot happens. For a book entirely about sex, there's not a lot of sex here. There's a lot of almost-sex. People imagine doing perverse things to each other - they try to do them - but very little gets accomplished.
Which, as Cecily points out below, is valid - especially for the adolescent characters, because I can clearly remember that my ratio of imagined to real sex acts in adolescence was about infinity to one - but the thing is that I had sort of the same feeling about the book. It seems to take itself seriously, but I'm not sure it really added up to much.
It's totally possible to write a book in which not much happens: see Remains of the Day, in which "Nothing happens" is the actual plot, or for that matter Hamlet. Those are both brilliant works. But I don't feel like Moody really pulls it off. I finished it and I was like...so?
Here's how it goes: everyone plays an author, and then you pick another author's keys and you have to write your story in their style!
For example, if I'm John Fowles and I end up with Jane Austen's keys, I might say
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a young lady to lock in his basement.Here are some names to get you started:
Ladies*
Jane Austen
Flannery O'Connor
Dorothy Parker
Ayn Rand
Carolyn Keene
Virginia Woolf
Gentlemen
Henry Miller
Charles Dickens
Jack Kerouac
Vlad Nabokov
Dashiell Hammett
Thomas Pynchon
* Not that you have to divvy it up by ladies and gentlemen, of course. You do your thing. It's the laziest way to divide into two groups but, like...heteronormativity is wack, kids! Which, honestly, this is sortof the problem with key parties in general. In our immediate circle is one gay couple and they're always so bored. The rest of us are fine with it - you have no idea how attractive they both are, it's ridiculous - but that doesn't really help them much.
Anyway, so have fun with that game at your next weird sex party; it will probably make it more fun than this book, in which not a lot happens. For a book entirely about sex, there's not a lot of sex here. There's a lot of almost-sex. People imagine doing perverse things to each other - they try to do them - but very little gets accomplished.
Which, as Cecily points out below, is valid - especially for the adolescent characters, because I can clearly remember that my ratio of imagined to real sex acts in adolescence was about infinity to one - but the thing is that I had sort of the same feeling about the book. It seems to take itself seriously, but I'm not sure it really added up to much.
It's totally possible to write a book in which not much happens: see Remains of the Day, in which "Nothing happens" is the actual plot, or for that matter Hamlet. Those are both brilliant works. But I don't feel like Moody really pulls it off. I finished it and I was like...so?
February 16, 2011
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.
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.
February 2, 2016
3.5 stars.
The Ice Storm was, oftentimes, an incredibly difficult read. Not in terms of structure or writing-style--Moody's writing was often sharp-intake-of-breath-beautiful:
"The sheer, white drapes in the guest room were limp as the bangs of a sad schoolgirl" (5)
or
"Once his dreams had been songs. He'd been a balladeer of promise and opportunity" (6)
but in the affect it had on me, the reader. Many of the scenes in the book were discomfiting, disturbing, heavily focused on sex acts, and the workings of the male genitalia (which, come to think of it, makes a great deal of sense by book's end, when the identity of the narrator is revealed). The characters in this book are fucked up and they, in their small way--and in the course of one Thanksgiving weekend--mirror the fucked up-ness of 1970s America...its political climate and the shortcomings of the promised suburban American Dream.
The narrator takes breaks in the story to interject rambling lists of 1970s goings-on and trends. At first, I thought this was mildly annoying, like "I GET IT, it's 1973, you don't have to tell me about the shag carpeting and the rainbow toe-socks and the bottle of Summer's Eve inconspicuously shelved in the bathroom". But then I got it--the narrator wasn't beating a 1970s kitsch horse over the head, but rather showing how the characters in The Ice Storm have surrounded themselves with (essentially meaningless) stuff. Stuff that doesn't provide an answer to any of life's big questions or fulfill deep and, as is often the case with these characters, unacknowledged (or, if acknowledged, disparaged) need.
The ice storm is the perfect ruse, the perfect metaphor. The storm (and with it the fate of these characters) moves towards an inevitable, terrible end. Like the ice-encased trees and power-lines, like the abandoned cars, these characters are stuck. And, as the narrator so artfully implies, they always will be:
"History's surveillance was subtle and enduring and its circular shape caught the Hoods, the Nixons, and everyone else. You could pay Arthur Janov to teach you to scream about history, or you could learn prayer, or a mantra, or you could write your life down and hope to make peace with it, write it down, or paint it, or turn it into improvisational theater, but that was the best you could probably do. You were stuck". 272-273
The Ice Storm was, oftentimes, an incredibly difficult read. Not in terms of structure or writing-style--Moody's writing was often sharp-intake-of-breath-beautiful:
"The sheer, white drapes in the guest room were limp as the bangs of a sad schoolgirl" (5)
or
"Once his dreams had been songs. He'd been a balladeer of promise and opportunity" (6)
but in the affect it had on me, the reader. Many of the scenes in the book were discomfiting, disturbing, heavily focused on sex acts, and the workings of the male genitalia (which, come to think of it, makes a great deal of sense by book's end, when the identity of the narrator is revealed). The characters in this book are fucked up and they, in their small way--and in the course of one Thanksgiving weekend--mirror the fucked up-ness of 1970s America...its political climate and the shortcomings of the promised suburban American Dream.
The narrator takes breaks in the story to interject rambling lists of 1970s goings-on and trends. At first, I thought this was mildly annoying, like "I GET IT, it's 1973, you don't have to tell me about the shag carpeting and the rainbow toe-socks and the bottle of Summer's Eve inconspicuously shelved in the bathroom". But then I got it--the narrator wasn't beating a 1970s kitsch horse over the head, but rather showing how the characters in The Ice Storm have surrounded themselves with (essentially meaningless) stuff. Stuff that doesn't provide an answer to any of life's big questions or fulfill deep and, as is often the case with these characters, unacknowledged (or, if acknowledged, disparaged) need.
The ice storm is the perfect ruse, the perfect metaphor. The storm (and with it the fate of these characters) moves towards an inevitable, terrible end. Like the ice-encased trees and power-lines, like the abandoned cars, these characters are stuck. And, as the narrator so artfully implies, they always will be:
"History's surveillance was subtle and enduring and its circular shape caught the Hoods, the Nixons, and everyone else. You could pay Arthur Janov to teach you to scream about history, or you could learn prayer, or a mantra, or you could write your life down and hope to make peace with it, write it down, or paint it, or turn it into improvisational theater, but that was the best you could probably do. You were stuck". 272-273
September 13, 2017
Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fi1v...
The Ice Storm is a tirade on how terrible your life can be when you are WASP and rich and priviledged. It's well written and flows like a wonder, but it is one of those books in which nothing really happens even when people die and everyone is a complete asshole, and if you are looking for one of those, by all means read Franzen's 21st century novels - they are, at least, quite dope - or John Updike's Rabbit novels before turning to this one.
The condescending way in which this book deals with comic books also felt less than super to me, but other people read that quite differently.
The Ice Storm is a tirade on how terrible your life can be when you are WASP and rich and priviledged. It's well written and flows like a wonder, but it is one of those books in which nothing really happens even when people die and everyone is a complete asshole, and if you are looking for one of those, by all means read Franzen's 21st century novels - they are, at least, quite dope - or John Updike's Rabbit novels before turning to this one.
The condescending way in which this book deals with comic books also felt less than super to me, but other people read that quite differently.
April 25, 2016
I saw the Ang Lee adaptation of this book a few years back and so was curious about Moody's novel. While the movie was stylized and Twin Peak-ish, it was a tad boring. The novel, on the other hand, was a page turner.
Set during a single 24-hour period in New Canaan Connecticut, 1973, Moody gives us an accurate lay of the land with all the products, projects, and preoccupations of the beginning of Watergate and the end of Viet Nam. I'm the same age as two of the teens in the book, Wendy and Sandy, and can say with authority that Moody captures the era perfectly.
One aspect that startled me a bit was the recollection of life before the microchip and its progeny. That time before smartphones, social media, and the long-tail economics of the internet. In fact, the only real technology in the home was the telephone, the television, and the stereo (vinyl, 8 track, and reel-to-reel for the audiophiles). All telephones were the property of AT&T. Lacking answering machines, telephones rang and rang in empty homes until the caller eventually hung up, not knowing the whereabouts of the callee and not being able to do anything about it until the person surfaced again from however far away they were from the phone. There is something fundamentally different about a world where communication is uncertain and subject to chance. In this current era, it's nearly impossible to hide, and few, if any, try to avoid the flow of information, connected as they are to their various feeds from email, facebook, and twitter. In 1973, there were no tweets from Kanye that needed attending to, and the world was a more mysterious, random, and possibly more authentic place - an analog world. Moody gives us this world wrapped up in the metaphoric coating of an ice storm.
Highly recommended!
Set during a single 24-hour period in New Canaan Connecticut, 1973, Moody gives us an accurate lay of the land with all the products, projects, and preoccupations of the beginning of Watergate and the end of Viet Nam. I'm the same age as two of the teens in the book, Wendy and Sandy, and can say with authority that Moody captures the era perfectly.
One aspect that startled me a bit was the recollection of life before the microchip and its progeny. That time before smartphones, social media, and the long-tail economics of the internet. In fact, the only real technology in the home was the telephone, the television, and the stereo (vinyl, 8 track, and reel-to-reel for the audiophiles). All telephones were the property of AT&T. Lacking answering machines, telephones rang and rang in empty homes until the caller eventually hung up, not knowing the whereabouts of the callee and not being able to do anything about it until the person surfaced again from however far away they were from the phone. There is something fundamentally different about a world where communication is uncertain and subject to chance. In this current era, it's nearly impossible to hide, and few, if any, try to avoid the flow of information, connected as they are to their various feeds from email, facebook, and twitter. In 1973, there were no tweets from Kanye that needed attending to, and the world was a more mysterious, random, and possibly more authentic place - an analog world. Moody gives us this world wrapped up in the metaphoric coating of an ice storm.
Highly recommended!
November 3, 2019
Beautifully written. Punchy and witty. The end had a surprising twist I wasn't expecting!
September 7, 2008
I'm not sure what I think about this book.
On one hand, Moody has a spellbinding quality about his writing. His voice is quite unique, and from a purely linquistic and literary perspective I found the book quite appealing. Also, I'm always attracted to writers who write about real, unattractive, unwholesome, unheroic people, and I usually enjoy works that are trying to expose the dark underbelly of society.
On the other hand the story seems, I don't know, contrived maybe. I appreciate his commentary on what modern American life has done to the family, and how completely at odds the two are. I get the thesis on the general sense of disappointment that so many people live in. I understand how marriages are being pulled apart by a culture in which most of your value as a human being is defined by your occupation outside the home. I remember how hard puberty was, with all the awkwardness and self-doubt, and horniness, and self-loathing, and all of that. I understand that our culture is over-sexed. I just am not sure the story here is big enough to hold all of Moody's ideas. None of the characters ever completely feel real to me. They give it their best college try, but they just can't quite realize this grand commentary Moody is going for. Probably because they're spending so much of their time thinking about sex. All of them. Every person in the book is consumed with sex. At first it was provocative, and then it was tragic, and then it just got. Dull.
It was a good try, and it wasn't a bad read, but the tragic beauty Moody was going for got lost in the details.
On one hand, Moody has a spellbinding quality about his writing. His voice is quite unique, and from a purely linquistic and literary perspective I found the book quite appealing. Also, I'm always attracted to writers who write about real, unattractive, unwholesome, unheroic people, and I usually enjoy works that are trying to expose the dark underbelly of society.
On the other hand the story seems, I don't know, contrived maybe. I appreciate his commentary on what modern American life has done to the family, and how completely at odds the two are. I get the thesis on the general sense of disappointment that so many people live in. I understand how marriages are being pulled apart by a culture in which most of your value as a human being is defined by your occupation outside the home. I remember how hard puberty was, with all the awkwardness and self-doubt, and horniness, and self-loathing, and all of that. I understand that our culture is over-sexed. I just am not sure the story here is big enough to hold all of Moody's ideas. None of the characters ever completely feel real to me. They give it their best college try, but they just can't quite realize this grand commentary Moody is going for. Probably because they're spending so much of their time thinking about sex. All of them. Every person in the book is consumed with sex. At first it was provocative, and then it was tragic, and then it just got. Dull.
It was a good try, and it wasn't a bad read, but the tragic beauty Moody was going for got lost in the details.
December 9, 2014
1.5 STARS
Set in the 1970s during an Ice Storm sexual awakening and secrets are plaguing the small town. I found it trying to hard to be literature. The movie was nothing to write home about.
Set in the 1970s during an Ice Storm sexual awakening and secrets are plaguing the small town. I found it trying to hard to be literature. The movie was nothing to write home about.
January 10, 2023
Ce m-a atras la Furtuna de gheață a fost tematica sexuală și partea despre adolescenți care experimentează tot felul de lucruri tabu din descriere. Îmi dau acum seama că cel mai tare îmi place la astfel de cărți faptul că sunt incredibil de triste – în spatele rebeliunilor precoce se află mereu multă traumă familială.
Acțiunea are loc la începutul anilor ’70 în America, în New Canaan, mai exact. Aici, majoritatea familiilor sunt bogate și se pretează la obiceiurile din suburbiile americane, cum ar fi petrecerile din vecini. Diferența este că Moody a adus în discuție o alt fel de petrecere, una de swingeri. Avem în centru două familii: Hood și Williams. Fără să ofer un mare spoiler, voi spune că legăturile dintre ele au început cu mult înaintea petrecerii.
Continuarea aici: https://cristinaboncea.com/2023/01/10...
Acțiunea are loc la începutul anilor ’70 în America, în New Canaan, mai exact. Aici, majoritatea familiilor sunt bogate și se pretează la obiceiurile din suburbiile americane, cum ar fi petrecerile din vecini. Diferența este că Moody a adus în discuție o alt fel de petrecere, una de swingeri. Avem în centru două familii: Hood și Williams. Fără să ofer un mare spoiler, voi spune că legăturile dintre ele au început cu mult înaintea petrecerii.
Continuarea aici: https://cristinaboncea.com/2023/01/10...
February 5, 2019
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/th...
Marvel Comics never interested me. Nor did the funny pages of the newspaper. But Rick Moody obviously likes comic books and superheroes and uses them to populate an otherwise engaging book about self-realization, sexual experimentation, coming of age, and marital infidelity. Not to mention a host of other notable topics in music, film, and politics from the year 1974.
...Until recently he had believed that the elderly were born that way, unlucky. Now he knew how effortless that transformation was…
The primary focus is on each individual member of the Hood family. Husband Ben, spouse Elena, daughter Wendy, and son Paul. The reader enters the mind of each of these characters and the text shifts back and forth among all four throughout the entire book. It works, but not without a bit of irritation with the writer Moody for using this G-d method.
...On the other hand, there was something compulsive about the way she got entangled, as though Wendy herself had picked the posture and activity that would most make her feel ashamed…
Criticisms of “exhaustive detailing”and “encyclopedic” additions to almost countless pages seemed to me to be both true and false as David Foster Wallace proved years later with his own infamous employ of the same tactics. I actually enjoyed most of Moody’s digressions and believe it added to the painful emotions all of the members were experiencing in real time. Moody proved to be a precursor to the infamous “endnotes” David Foster Wallace himself became famous for.
...She had admitted to herself for a moment that her husband’s infidelity was, in the end, his own business, however awful it made her feel…
The “key party” in the midst of one of the worst winter ice storms in Connecticut history was the central event the characters managed, in their own private affairs, to spin around endlessly. Ice, of course, is frozen water and there seemed to be no end to its erosive characteristics. Storms do eventually end and repairs are made. And some destruction cannot be avoided.
Marvel Comics never interested me. Nor did the funny pages of the newspaper. But Rick Moody obviously likes comic books and superheroes and uses them to populate an otherwise engaging book about self-realization, sexual experimentation, coming of age, and marital infidelity. Not to mention a host of other notable topics in music, film, and politics from the year 1974.
...Until recently he had believed that the elderly were born that way, unlucky. Now he knew how effortless that transformation was…
The primary focus is on each individual member of the Hood family. Husband Ben, spouse Elena, daughter Wendy, and son Paul. The reader enters the mind of each of these characters and the text shifts back and forth among all four throughout the entire book. It works, but not without a bit of irritation with the writer Moody for using this G-d method.
...On the other hand, there was something compulsive about the way she got entangled, as though Wendy herself had picked the posture and activity that would most make her feel ashamed…
Criticisms of “exhaustive detailing”and “encyclopedic” additions to almost countless pages seemed to me to be both true and false as David Foster Wallace proved years later with his own infamous employ of the same tactics. I actually enjoyed most of Moody’s digressions and believe it added to the painful emotions all of the members were experiencing in real time. Moody proved to be a precursor to the infamous “endnotes” David Foster Wallace himself became famous for.
...She had admitted to herself for a moment that her husband’s infidelity was, in the end, his own business, however awful it made her feel…
The “key party” in the midst of one of the worst winter ice storms in Connecticut history was the central event the characters managed, in their own private affairs, to spin around endlessly. Ice, of course, is frozen water and there seemed to be no end to its erosive characteristics. Storms do eventually end and repairs are made. And some destruction cannot be avoided.
January 3, 2014
Maybe this book is too long. Maybe the other reviewers are correct that Rick Moody's scrupulous attention to 70s pop culture overwhelms his ability to tell a good story. Maybe I know, and like, Ang Lee's movie adaptation too well. Whatever the case, my mind wandered an awful lot while I was trying to read The Ice Storm, a book I first admired but didn't like and then didn't admire or like all that much.
Three of my wandering thoughts:
1. The Ice Storm tells the story of a typical day in the life of Panem's capitol city. Recently, I read Catching Fire, which depicts scenes of the same kind of extravagance and immorality that drives the characters in this book. Only, there isn't a Katniss to critique and seek revenge. There are only clueless, self-destructive, privileged people in tasteless clothes.
2. I wasn't prepared for the sex. Seriously, there is a lot of it, it is graphic, and it is between adults only about half of the time. The book is supposed to satirize icy suburbanites, so I guess the fact that they all have terrible, embarrassing, violent sex (never with their own partners) is a reminder of the cultivated class's inability to form or enjoy human relationships. On one hand, I think Moody could have made this point without so many references to thirteen-year-old Wendy's vagina and pubic hair. On the other, I appreciated some of the vintage terminology.
3. Kevin Kline is a lot better-looking than Benjamin Hood is supposed to be. More broadly, I think the adult characters are warmer, more relatable and rounded, in the movie. Here is maybe the problem with all the pop cultural references and the pages and pages of dry Fantastic Four summary. The movie cuts a lot of that out, and Kline, Joan Allen, and Sigourney Weaver are better actors than Moody's characters deserve.
In the last chapter, the author shares a few revelations. One of these is that the books' characters are as bound to history and helpless in its wake as are the people at the "front" of history, like Nixon. This is fairly banal as last-act revelations go, but it lets us know that Moody has aspired to write a book in the vein of, say, Doctorow's Ragtime that interprets history by combining fictional and nonfictional characters. He doesn't exactly fail at this, but he is more interested in white U.S. American pop culture than what I would call "history", and, like I said, my mind wandered...
Three of my wandering thoughts:
1. The Ice Storm tells the story of a typical day in the life of Panem's capitol city. Recently, I read Catching Fire, which depicts scenes of the same kind of extravagance and immorality that drives the characters in this book. Only, there isn't a Katniss to critique and seek revenge. There are only clueless, self-destructive, privileged people in tasteless clothes.
2. I wasn't prepared for the sex. Seriously, there is a lot of it, it is graphic, and it is between adults only about half of the time. The book is supposed to satirize icy suburbanites, so I guess the fact that they all have terrible, embarrassing, violent sex (never with their own partners) is a reminder of the cultivated class's inability to form or enjoy human relationships. On one hand, I think Moody could have made this point without so many references to thirteen-year-old Wendy's vagina and pubic hair. On the other, I appreciated some of the vintage terminology.
3. Kevin Kline is a lot better-looking than Benjamin Hood is supposed to be. More broadly, I think the adult characters are warmer, more relatable and rounded, in the movie. Here is maybe the problem with all the pop cultural references and the pages and pages of dry Fantastic Four summary. The movie cuts a lot of that out, and Kline, Joan Allen, and Sigourney Weaver are better actors than Moody's characters deserve.
In the last chapter, the author shares a few revelations. One of these is that the books' characters are as bound to history and helpless in its wake as are the people at the "front" of history, like Nixon. This is fairly banal as last-act revelations go, but it lets us know that Moody has aspired to write a book in the vein of, say, Doctorow's Ragtime that interprets history by combining fictional and nonfictional characters. He doesn't exactly fail at this, but he is more interested in white U.S. American pop culture than what I would call "history", and, like I said, my mind wandered...
February 8, 2017
This was a favorite when I first read it at around age 20. I responded to its cynical view of American suburban life and this dissolution of the nuclear family. I admired its wry take on consumerism and the soulless pop culture of its era, the early 1970s, and its rhetoric influenced a wannabe subversive undergrad pretentiousness that I didn't shake until well into adulthood. In a similar way, its unorthodox stylistic features and narrative structure informed my own half-assed attempts at being a writer in the mid-to-late 90s. Returning to the book at age 40, I'm less sure of its greatness even if I still have a positive response to it. I'm willing to keep the five star rating out of nostalgia and personal connection even if I can acknowledge that I wouldn't have rated it so highly if I'd read it now for the first time. The style can be a little tedious. Those long laundry lists of 70s pop culture expressed as a series of sentence fragment noun phrases. The flat characterization. The deus ex machina plot resolution. The utter cynicism. It all adds up something intriguing but less than transcendent. I hope people will still discover the book at age 20 and try on a smug, nihilistic worldview for a few years, and, for that possibility alone, I'm glad to have read it and returned to it twenty years later.
January 31, 2012
What I love about this book is its unsentimental view of suburban turmoil and discontent--that phrase "all is not what it seems" I love to see played out in literature so much. In some ways, THE ICE STORM feels like it picks up where Richard Yates' classic and brilliant suburban novel REVOLUTIONARY ROAD left off--from the 50's to the early 70's--and in the span of that decade between the two books, adults haven't learned much. One immediate difference with Moody's story though, is that he offers the point of view of the equally complicated children in these families, giving a fresh new dimension to an otherwise old tale. Sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, but painfully accurate.
December 22, 2009
All in all, I gotta say I'm disappointed. That's why I'm giving this book such a mediocre review- something I rarely do for books. I *loved* this movie. I love how it dealt with these "slice of life" moments in the lives of these four family members, and how they coalesced around their indescretions with a neighbor family. Paul, the son who was least involved in this inter-familial deceit (he lived at boarding school and spent the majority of the book at a friend's apartment far away in New York,) was the obvious choice for narrator. I like how they did it in the movie- Paul's fleeting but poigniant overtures to the plot progression, plus the crispness and unspokenness of the action. My favorite scene- the ending scene, where the family picks Paul up from the train station after all is said and done- is so wonderful for what it conveys by *lack* of dialogue and internal angst. It's just such a beautiful, compelling look into the life of this family without hitting you over the head with "what it all means" or "what's coming next."
The book, however, is chock full of all of this. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of dialogue- even the truncuated sentences were too rambly and unbelievable. Way too much stream-of-consciousness and breaking away from the plot to reminsce over the Conneticut landscape from the train or disjointed childhood memories thta I had to ask myself, continuously, what's important here? And why should I care? (Which is shocking enough in itself since, as a writer, I am usually far more interested in character development than plot!)
But the characters themselves were similarly hollow. The whole book kinda read as a rambly encyclopedia for 1970s culture, and the Hoods were mere outcroppings of popular trends. They barely had distinctive voices at all. Paul and Wendy, the brother and sister, had nearly identical sexual experiences (down to the specifics of what acts they performed on which gender.) Each of them came equipped with these trivia deviations- paragraphs thrown into their narratives as if Moody was writing a poorly-constructed essay on counterculture, whether it was about the Paul's heroes, the Fantastic Four, Wendy's favorite television programs, or Elena's psychology book finds.
There were occasional moments of insight within all of the hubris, plus my love for the movie characters that make me give the book props. I also am an advocate for exploring sexual themes in books- but they should be beliveable. People may be influenced by the culture of the day, absolutely, but ultimately, their choices should be their own, and not read like some sort of sterilized "example" of whatever theme the author is trying to prove.
The book, however, is chock full of all of this. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of dialogue- even the truncuated sentences were too rambly and unbelievable. Way too much stream-of-consciousness and breaking away from the plot to reminsce over the Conneticut landscape from the train or disjointed childhood memories thta I had to ask myself, continuously, what's important here? And why should I care? (Which is shocking enough in itself since, as a writer, I am usually far more interested in character development than plot!)
But the characters themselves were similarly hollow. The whole book kinda read as a rambly encyclopedia for 1970s culture, and the Hoods were mere outcroppings of popular trends. They barely had distinctive voices at all. Paul and Wendy, the brother and sister, had nearly identical sexual experiences (down to the specifics of what acts they performed on which gender.) Each of them came equipped with these trivia deviations- paragraphs thrown into their narratives as if Moody was writing a poorly-constructed essay on counterculture, whether it was about the Paul's heroes, the Fantastic Four, Wendy's favorite television programs, or Elena's psychology book finds.
There were occasional moments of insight within all of the hubris, plus my love for the movie characters that make me give the book props. I also am an advocate for exploring sexual themes in books- but they should be beliveable. People may be influenced by the culture of the day, absolutely, but ultimately, their choices should be their own, and not read like some sort of sterilized "example" of whatever theme the author is trying to prove.
September 16, 2021
The film of this novel, directed by Ang Lee in 1997, is one of my favorite films. I know—the subject matter is depressing—but the snapshot of changing family dynamics and values during the 1970s was skillfully rendered as both grotesque and beautiful in Lee’s vision. The soundtrack is incredible; his transitions are exquisite and chilling; the actors (Sigourney Weaver at her icy best) Kevin Kline, Christina Ricci, Allison Janey, Joan Allen, Elijah Wood—perfectly cast. I read the book and was disappointed at how much it lacked the richness of the film; it is a rare thing for me to recommend the film adaptation over the novel, but this is one text that surpasses the page. Very dark sense of humor, replete with a wrenching example of “irony,” thanks to a man named Rod.
File under: Watch the film! I’m going to shelve this under “faves” in the hopes that people watch the movie instead of reading the book!
File under: Watch the film! I’m going to shelve this under “faves” in the hopes that people watch the movie instead of reading the book!
September 30, 2017
Since when do parents leave their teenage children unsupervised at home so they can go out drunk driving in an ice storm? Why would someone host a neighborhood-wide swingers' party on a Thanksgiving weekend?—again—during an ice storm? None of this story makes sense! Moody pushes and pulls characters along bizarrely configured subplots, just to have them in the right place at the right time to converge into an overkill of an ending. The Ang Lee film, adapted from this, is better, though the wind flute soundtrack feels out-of-character, and why don't they defrost their cars—again—during an ice storm?... In any case, now I know from where P.T. Anderson got the basic structure for Magnolia, which came out five years after the novel and two years after the movie. Who would have thought that such a shitty novel could be so influential?
November 10, 2017
I loved the movie — how did it take me so long to discover the book? The book holds up not only because of its clever, tight plotting, but because Moody ties the period setting to the characters’ inner struggles. The Silent Generation adults are enticed by the Summer of Love philosophy that’s trickled down to their Winter of Resentment, while the kids struggle to find their own footing amid confused, quietly angry role models. It’s an unforgiving portrait of a time and a place, but Moody sees his characters so sympathetically that it doesn’t feel misanthropic.
I reviewed The Ice Storm for The Tangential.
I reviewed The Ice Storm for The Tangential.
May 22, 2020
A solid 4.0 stars, but a real personal favorite of mine, so I bestow a 4.5.
I read this book after developing a feverous obsession with Ang Lee's 1997 film adaptation, and was engulfed by this novel as quickly and completely as the film. Moody's prose is readable, personal, humorous and unrelenting, propelling you deeper and deeper in the lives and minds of two suburban families in 1973. The novel aches almost from the get go, eventually crescendoing into a poised but agonizing wail of pain. Those looking for a quick, tragic read will have that urge thoroughly satisfied with this novel.
I read this book after developing a feverous obsession with Ang Lee's 1997 film adaptation, and was engulfed by this novel as quickly and completely as the film. Moody's prose is readable, personal, humorous and unrelenting, propelling you deeper and deeper in the lives and minds of two suburban families in 1973. The novel aches almost from the get go, eventually crescendoing into a poised but agonizing wail of pain. Those looking for a quick, tragic read will have that urge thoroughly satisfied with this novel.
November 24, 2017
I don't recall actually reading this but I know that I watched the movie and that I used to live with a copy of this book back when I was actually reading books like all teh time so I'm pretty sure I read it but cannot recall anything, in part because if I actually did read this book, I did not realize that I had seen the film adaptation until much much later, it being one of those sorts of movies one watched in secret
January 18, 2015
Loved every word. Had no idea Moody was this good. Will be reading more of him. Very jealous of his talent.
January 7, 2018
Suburbanites Behaving Badly™️
July 5, 2021
Read like a good, entertaining HBO family drama mini series.
July 10, 2022
Al principio parecía que iba a acabar siendo una novela erótica llena de referencias a la cultura americana, pero justo después te cambia por completo la temática y se pone interesante. Gratamente sorprendido
February 14, 2024
I was compelled by most of this book even in spite of having seen the movie a bunch of times. I guess I like a 1970s pastiche and I liked imagining Sigourney Weaver (who doesn't). And the writing was good like good solid sentences. I liked them. But by the end here I just feel reaffirmed in my stance that men shouldn't really be allowed to make art, or at least I shouldn't partake of it.
December 26, 2020
Ice ice, baby.
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