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Summary: The movie was great as is the book.
Review: I heard of the Ice Storm after reading an article on Katie Holmes of "Dawson's Creek" being as it was her very first movie. She portrayed the character of Libbets Casey and even though it was a small part the movie was great and I am reading the book. Mr. Moody is a very captivating author and it was a good disturbing feeling as you read the book and watch the movie.
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Summary: Hard to believe Rick Moody was only a small child in 1973
Review: I just finished reading this novel and I am a little surprised by the range of responses in this section to "The Ice Storm". I couldn't put it down. I found it funny, historically accurate, witty, and telling. I still haven't seen the movie, although I plan on seeing it soon, but I've heard it's excellent. They had great material to work with.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the Best, but Definitely not the Worst
Review: I read the Ice Storm a bit ago, and it was not the first Moody novel I had read. I think the metaphors of the novel are fully developed--as are the feelings of despair. Most call Garden State Moody's finest novel, but I tend to disagree. I don't think Moody's finest novel has been written. Therefor, neither Garden State or The Ice Storm are the finest. But, if you are reading this review, you should pick up both and watch the development of a writer, watch him ponder different themes and come to grips with them. I would recommend any Moody collection to anyone--except maybe my mother. The sexual themes are a bit much, but easy to get around if you see what Moody is trying to do. If you are a writer you understand these things: you must explore themes and scenes that are taboo, that no other writer would tackle (maybe they would--maybe these books are a calling out, a sort of dare or welcoming to a cutting of heads). Moody has chops I can't believe. He's up there with all the workshop guys--such as Thom Jones, Denis Johnson and Kevin Canty--and I think these guys are about to have their day of reckoning:no longer relegated to the term "workshop guys." In other words, read this book, damn it, and maybe you will see a new (not so new if you are a workshop guy like me--did I forget to mention that?) revolution about to happen. Maybe you will actually get a book that shows human beings for exactly what they are. That's what no one can understand. I read another review that called the charaters not fully developed, cardboard cutouts. Sorry, but people aren't fully developed. We only go beyond cutouts when we die. If you're looking for "beyond cardboard cutouts" go to the literature of the past. Moody, and his contemps, are writing literature of the here and now and, hopefully, the future.
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Summary: See the Movie
Review: I read the novel after seeing the movie and found the movie screenplay much more satisfying. I recommend the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Flat
Review: I saw the movie and it was excellent. I decided to buy the book and it was not at good as the movie. I think Moody has a lot of talent yet the story did not stay with me like the movie did.
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Summary: He and Updike
Review: I thought it was brilliant. I can't help but be fascinated, having been brought up in a rural area, by the opaque but brittle veneer that protects suburbia. Pristine and privledged on the outside, but so dark and full of lovely, troubled daughters on the inside. Though I'm in Manhattan now, and was, as I said, raised in a rural setting, I can feel my future being tugged inexorably toward some northern suburbia, where I too will perform bizarre acts of self-degradation behind the oaken doors of my modernized home.
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Summary: One of the most powerfull storys ever
Review: I wasn't going to add anything about this book as there are so many responses. But after reading the wide range of opinions I just had to give mine. This book is powerful and deeply disturbing. I like being disturbed sometimes if the authors heart is in the right place. Rick Moody has a soul and an empathy for the human condition that is evedent in this well written novel. I too, like so many of you, saw the film first. I loved the movie, but the book is a must for anyone interested in the story. The characters are sympathetic and brutal at the same time. The most notable being "Wendy". Cristina Ricci, my second favorite actress, did as good a job as anyone could, but the litarary Wendy has much more to her then "I'll show you mine if you show me yours". There is real suffering and pain in this character, the kind that makes the reader a richer person for having shared in it, if only vicariosly. I highly recomend this book and this film."Lost Johnny"
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Summary: Ron Moody's Marital Moods
Review: In the 1970's, according to author Ron Moody, the sexual freedom of the 1960's had finally found it's way into the suburbs, tossing morals, marriages and the family structure into the Cuisinart. Those families that survived did not come out unscarred and many came out far worse off than that. THE ICE STORM is a book that is so profoundly upsetting that I could not recommend it freely to many readers. Like ORDINARY PEOPLE, it is about failure, the shortcomings of people who, at one time, meant well: mothers, fathers, neighbors. Both novels, in fact, leave only the children with any veil of innocence (and it is a messy, WATERGATE-infused innocence at that.) What Moody does brilliantly here, is offer up people making bad choices,and still paint them as humans, capable of compassion and, thankfully, redemption. Readers of THE ICE STORM will have to wait through the moral thaw to get to this redemption, however. The brutality of the storyline aside, Moody is a master storyteller, with an engaging group of narrators (all distinct), and characters brilliant even in their defeat. His details of 1970's pop-culture with its I'M OKAY, YOU'RE OKAY mantra are plentiful and razor sharp--television images long forgotten from your past will take you by storm. Amongst most writers of his generation, Moody pays attention to human nature, environments, and the blindly shifting morals of our culture and elegantly lays out his findings to the fortunate readers who brave this unsettling and wonderful novel.
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Summary: A well-written, not-nice story
Review: In the late fall of 1973 I was a twenty-nine-year librarian in Dallas, cheering on the downfall of Richard Nixon and learning to write book reviews. As Moody says, it was a very, very different time -- so different I doubt anyone under thirty-five can even imagine it. No call waiting, no cable TV, no AIDS or HIV, no laser printers, no CDs, no Reagan Revolution. The names Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin still meant something. We knew who Rose Mary Woods was, too. But still, New Canaan, Connecticut, was a very different place from north Texas. That fall, Benjamin Hood and his wife, Elena, took the final step toward the break-up of their shaky, unhappy marriage. Wendy Hood, age fourteen, was becoming known as a slut, though she wasn't a bad kid and it wasn't entirely her fault. Her brother, Paul, wasn't having much fun as a seventeen-year-old preppie, either. It was the year the key party came to the upscale suburbs. None of the characters in this painful-to-read novel are particularly likable. You might feel sorry for them, at least some of the time, but you wouldn't particularly want to spend time with any of them, or at least I wouldn't. But Moody keeps you reading, wondering how they're going to screw themselves up next. Making an engrossing story out of unpleasant people and distasteful situations isn't easy, but he manages it.
Rating:
Summary: Too Much Information
Review: It's a rare thing, but I liked the film better. Plus, my view of the book may have been colored by the film, which I saw before I read the book. We are given all this info what wasn't in the film that lead me to almost dislike the characters, I could not identify with them as well in the book. Yes, they had more demension, but less mystery, things were more on the surface in book, all the reasons, every wart and sore (literally in Ben's case) was there to see. But for any problems I had with the characters I still liked the story and Moody's style is fantasic. He's smart and is able to go off on tangents, then brings you back to the main subject with better insight to what is going on. The book is well worth the read, the Film is definitely worth a viewing.
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