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Summary: Reviews for The Icestorm
Review: "The Ice Storm is as chilling in print as it is on the screen. . . a published screenplay that can be enjoyed completely on its own merits. James Schamus' graceful literate script brims with exceptional attention to detail." --Entertainment Weekly"Wonderful screenplay adaptation. . . It's good work." --True Review
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Summary: An Intense Reading Experience
Review: A powerful tour through the agonies of family life in a very particular early 70's version of the human condition. The characters wallow into a Big Muddy of their own making, but their portrayal is vivid, poignant and moving. Seeing the movie is no barrier to reading the book. It's the same story told much more deeply and richly.
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Summary: Poor Moody
Review: First of all, don't buy the Ice Storm. By the fourth chapter, it has degenerated into excessive name dropping of TV shows and a sort of setting-as-metaphor style that Moody and his friend Jeffery Eugenides seem to like so much, none of which is successful in the least. Which is so unfortunate because the characters in this book just cry out to be made whole and experienced as real human beings, not just cardboard cutouts advertising the excesses of the 70s (which is perhaps why the movie was so successful, allowing the actors to bring the depth to the characters that the novel just can't). What Moody seems to have forgotten in his obbession with "long, torrid sentences" and "musicality" in prose is that literature is not music. It's literature. A sentence that goes on and on and on and on, never letting you come up for air is a sentence that should be edited.
As a writer, I have always thought the most important aspect of a book was whether it moved you or not, whether you felt chills reading it. But somehow literature has become about being "stylish" or "clever" or "ironic", subsituting a professor's cool wit for a writer's hard but big heart. I'd rather read Richard Russo than labor through the Ice Storm because Russo knows how to write a story. All Moody can do is create a mood and he's not even very good at that, because he thinks he's making music when its really only the sound of him feverishly typing. But Moody is a not a bad writer. Just read "The Ring Of The Brightest Angels Around Heaven". I did, and I was incredibly moved. His depiction of the varying moods experienced during sexual intercourse was powerful and groundbreaking. While so many others writers want to write pornography, Moody writes with a complexity that the act deserves. But like so many other readers (and writers for that matter) I'm beginning to be puzzled over the Rick Moody phenomeneon. Maybe Moody just doesn't have the capability to write great characters and chooses to hide this fact like so much guitar wank hides the lack of a decent melody. If so, I suggest he write poetry. But if he does, I sincerely hope he gives us readers the novel we know he's capable of
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Summary: Death on the Installment Plan, New England-style!
Review: First of all, I didn't grow up in the 1970s & my parents were neither alcoholics nor avid party-goers. My reaction to the book can be best expressed in terms of other books I've read or attempted to read. As I began reading I immediately thought of Gerald's Party by Rober Coover, a book I've never been able to progress into very far. Not a good sign. By the time I was halfway through The Ice Storm I was thinking in terms of two Thomas Pynchon novels: Gravitys Rainbow because it was published in 1973 & dealt with old New England families & puritan gloom & portents in the sky, & Vineland because of the interactions between Zoyd, his daughter, & her boyfriend. As I approached the end of The Ice Storm I had begun thinking in terms of Celine's first two novels: Journey to the End of the Night, & Death on the Installment Plan. Both Celine novels contained scenes of death & desolation, but in Death on the Installment Plan the resemblance was uncanny. All in all, The Ice Storm is a dark novel that you can read in one long night. As a postscript, some comparison with Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter seems unavoidable as well. The Scarlet Letter features a talismanic object, the actual letter "A" that Hester was forced to wear on her clothing, & which the narrator purports to have found discarded in his attic many years later. The talismanic object in The Ice Storm appears to be a black garter belt, with its four (four!) dangling suspenders, which appears in the novel's opening scene & repeatedly thereafter. Readers will find that the number "four" in Moody's novel has a significance similar to that of the letter "A" in Hawthorne's. I doubt that this was accidental, but leave it to other readers to explore these speculations on their own.
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Summary: see the movie
Review: I came to this book through seeing the movie, which is a classic. Moody brillantlly provides great texture and detail, creating a 1973 of the mind. However, the characters don't carry the novel off. In Ang Lee's film, the Hood's and Williamses are lost, but not cruel. You can connect with the akward silences. The failed attempts at affection. The inevitable destruction the characters unwittingly inflict on each other. There is a humaness about them that lets viewers sympathize and empathize and feel pathos for the mess left behind. In Moody's verson, Dad is a vulgarian, calling his 4-year-old duagter a slut while spanking her with a hairbrush. Mom shoves soap down her throat over a trist with the boy next door: a far cry from the gentle, confused, detached restrait with which Kevin Kline and Joan Allen infuse the characters. The thrust of human failing is replaced by vicious pathology, and makes for reading that is far more upsetting, yet far less emotionally complex for the reader. See the movie.
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Summary: sentences that make you swoon
Review: i don't understand why exactly, but rick moody seems to make some readers angry. the characters are unlikeable, they say. the sentences are too long. does reading nabakov make the same readers angry? maybe they stumbled onto the ice storm expecting something else, something safe. ignore them.
rick moody taps into the part of the world you only notice when you're really looking. he's funny and he's sad and i would hang out in this book forever, because the way the characters see things makes total sense to me.
"Blundering into the kitchen, he felt sure that it would always be this way, this blunt little diorama of a life with its cessation of miracles would never change--except that it would get worse."
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Summary: An interesting read
Review: I feel that while it's useful to compare novels to films, it's wrong to just say that one or the other is better. So my review will be simply based on what I thought of the novel. I liked Moody's writing style, especially the straightforward depictions of topics that are often somewhat muted in literature, such as sex and drugs. Though some parts of it seemed slow and artificial, overall it presented an interesting picture of the life of a troubled family in the 70s. I think it provides a good example of a family dealing with a crisis and avoiding breaking apart by keeping closer together. I would recommend the novel to those willing to experience some disturbing and thought-provoking moments.
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Summary: Dull
Review: I found this to be a dull look at a suburban family falling into moral ruin.
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Summary: Too depressing
Review: I got nothing out of this book. It was depressing without also being merciful or sympathetic or even interesting. Who can care about these characters? Too much 70s detail and not enough character development.
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Summary: Very open minded to read
Review: I had to read this book for a Lit class. I don't know if i would have found it on my own, being a reader anyway, but glad i was exposed to it. I may not have thought about the book that much if it weren't for the class actually. We were encouraged to close read many passages and explore the many themes of the text including sexuality (a big obvious one), family, maturity, stability, fashion... I enjoyed the book even with it's many depressing and somewhat embarassing moments. I would recommend and carefully examine some of the chosen words.
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