Rating: 
Summary: It's a good book
Review: It's about a suburban family in Connecticut in November of 1973. Adultery, wife-swapping, deteriorating marriages, teenagers experimenting with sex, and how an ice storm brings the whole of it to a head. It held my interest and I read it in three days. I purchased the book because I wanted to learn more about the characters from the movie. The film (though great) just about grazed the surface of what these people are supposed to be like! In the book they are a lot more disturbed, deep-thinking, and sexual than the actors portrayed them in the film. The same scenes are more graphic in the book and further things happen that wouldn't be appropriate onscreen. The author uses a lot of brand names, current events, and celebrity mentions that are accurate to the times he's writing about. It was fun reading about some TV shows and news bits I'd totally forgotten about! The only problem I had with him is that sometimes he'll say a sentence in a very elaborate fashion, but what he's said doesn't come across as making much sense, and some of the comparables he made didn't connect well in my opinion. More often, though, he could get a point across brilliantly. A few other concepts that didn't jibe were Wendy Hood's having a lesbian experience as an adolescent in 1973, and having a single friend or boy interested in her after the whole school finds out about it! Not too realistic! She would've been ostracized like she had the plague for doing something like that back then! Mikey and Sandy wouldn't have wanted any part of her and the girls would've been beating her up on a daily basis! Another thing that was inconsistent, where the author confused 1973 with current times (and I had a feeling he was going to make this mistake) was in his writing that Elena Hood had breast-fed. She was supposed to have given birth in 1957 and 1959, Mr. Moody. In the late 50's almost NO ONE breast-fed. Everyone bottle-fed in those days. Breast-feeding didn't make its big comeback till around the late 70's.
Rating: 
Summary: You Were There, Rick, We Believe You.
Review: Like a drunken machine gunner, Rick Moody does hit a few targets in The Ice Storm, but there's a lot of icky Bazooka gum to be chewed before getting to the occasional wise insight. The novel's problems are few but each one is serious. First, the eager beaver desire to convince us that he remembers 1973 grates. At one point I counted 16 references in a row to pop psychology books of the day. Evoking a certain era from the past has to be more than listing brand names and pop songs; Moody shows no sign of realizing this and though he scratches and scratches at the emotional surface of a meaningless marriage in a banal time, he can't draw blood...so he lists a few more things. Second, the novel's heart is cold; empathy takes a back seat to mockery, except where the children are concerned. Not coincidentally, the novel's strengths are found in its portrayal of the kids. Sadly, what was meant to be a tour de force slips on the ice and flops.
Rating:
Summary: Very satisfying
Review: Like a lot of folks, I saw the movie before I picked up the book, and I found them to be very satisying complements to each other. The book does an excellent job of setting up how the characters got to where they were on the night in question, and in general does an excellent job of evoking the lostness that LOTS of people felt in those days. Me among them. Anyway, this is a book well worth reading, though I think I agree with a number of folks that, rarity of rarities, the movie may be slightly better crafted and more disciplined.
Rating: 
Summary: A dark and wonderful story
Review: Like many books which receive a wider appreciation due to film adaptations, The Ice Storm is unfairly compared to the film version and is evaluated with the film in mind. Thankfully the film adaption of The Ice Storm was a wonderful success, but ultimately the book deserves to be reviewed on its own terms. Moody's book is wonderful - a beautifully written story, so evocative of it's setting (early 70's suburbia) and so subtle in it's portrail of a family in crisis. It's emotional stuff and it's dark tone leaves you feeling a little shell-shocked but it's a story you won't soon forget.
Rating: 
Summary: Utterly disappointing
Review: Like many, I came to this novel after being suitably impressed with Ang Lee's film. In fact, I expected to enjoy the book even more than the film, because, nine times out of ten, the book is superior. Unfortunately, this is not the case with The Ice Storm. I don't even know where to begin in listing the problems of this novel, but I guess I'll start with the characters. I'm not someone who thinks you always have to love the characters, heck, I don't even necessarily want to like them at all. All I ask is that they be interesting. None of the characters is interesting. Each of them is a paper-thin stock character with a few attributes hastily applied. None of them have unique voices (save for Paul's roommate, whose voice is ridiculously forced), and they are all cliched. You've got the alcoholic dad who is unhappy in his marriage and his life, his wife who is trying to take control of her own life, their kids who do as their parents do for lack of guidance...it's like a catalogue of how not to write a domestic novel. Their actions feel forced, as if Moody is sitting there behind them, pushing them ahead. The worst problem with the novel is that the language is tepid and lifeless. Nothing in the novel is described outright; everything is compared to something else. Generally these analogies are confusing, occasionally they are nonsensical. His metaphors are equally frustrating, and frequently downright hackneyed. A frozen house with pipes bursting as a metaphor for a family bursting at the seams? Give me a break. What makes all of this worse is the afterword in which Moody talks about how much he loves language and how beautiful it is. I'm sure he loves language, but The Ice Storm definitely doesn't reflect that. In short, this is a bland, lifeless book which was somehow turned into a wonderful film. I highly recommend the latter.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly disappointing
Review: Like many, I came to this novel after being suitably impressed with Ang Lee's film. In fact, I expected to enjoy the book even more than the film, because, nine times out of ten, the book is superior. Unfortunately, this is not the case with The Ice Storm. I don't even know where to begin in listing the problems of this novel, but I guess I'll start with the characters. I'm not someone who thinks you always have to love the characters, heck, I don't even necessarily want to like them at all. All I ask is that they be interesting. None of the characters is interesting. Each of them is a paper-thin stock character with a few attributes hastily applied. None of them have unique voices (save for Paul's roommate, whose voice is ridiculously forced), and they are all cliched. You've got the alcoholic dad who is unhappy in his marriage and his life, his wife who is trying to take control of her own life, their kids who do as their parents do for lack of guidance...it's like a catalogue of how not to write a domestic novel. Their actions feel forced, as if Moody is sitting there behind them, pushing them ahead. The worst problem with the novel is that the language is tepid and lifeless. Nothing in the novel is described outright; everything is compared to something else. Generally these analogies are confusing, occasionally they are nonsensical. His metaphors are equally frustrating, and frequently downright hackneyed. A frozen house with pipes bursting as a metaphor for a family bursting at the seams? Give me a break. What makes all of this worse is the afterword in which Moody talks about how much he loves language and how beautiful it is. I'm sure he loves language, but The Ice Storm definitely doesn't reflect that. In short, this is a bland, lifeless book which was somehow turned into a wonderful film. I highly recommend the latter.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining read, and a page-turner.
Review: Moody gives us discriptive and thoughtful identities of two families that are not perfect, as most aren't and even gives us a few laughs in this not so happy story. It kept my attention and I liked it very much. A quick and entertaining book.
Rating:
Summary: didn't live up to the movie, actually
Review: Ninety percent of the time the book is as good or better than
the movie. And so if I tell you that I'd rate the movie 4 out of
5 five stars, then you'll ask me what was wrong with the book.
The answer is that it's just trying too hard. Is it really some
kind of expose to report on the banality of the burbs? Haven't a
score of other authors beaten Moody to the punch 10, 20 years
before? The answer is yes. And so I wouldn't complain if, say,
his were a highly original take on that subject. A really great
angle that hasn't been shown a thousand times before. But it
isn't. Neither is the time of the 1970s greatly in further need
of expose as being a (purported) nexus in bad taste and poor
judgement. It may be highly stylized (and some of Moody's other works
are far worse in the too-lovely prose department, so I won't
complain very loudly on this count), I suppose to provoke import
in the reader, but somehow Ang Lee managed to get his actors to
evoke a lot more for me than the book did! Or perhaps the "veneer
of the burbs" angle is less played out in American film, and I
just tolerate the movie (and also American Beauty) to a far higher
degree than this book. Another reviewer below says "No one will confuse it with
brilliant literature, but..." Well, that's not true- this Moody
guy is hailed as a God by an incredible number of people. Oh well. Go grab A.M. Homes' "Music for Torching" instead. Or one of
Wally Lamb's fine novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Someone hand me a razor blade...
Review: Overwritten with too many self-consciously placed references to the time using popular culture. Why do so many authors think that an encyclopedic knowledge of the cultural relics of an era constitute good writing? Seems like all you need to be able to do is regurgitate all the hours you spent in front of the television as a child while your unhappily married, hard drinking, station wagon driving parents in leisure suits and white loafers went to cocktail parties in the neighbors' split level houses. I'm depressed enough, thank you. The problem is the alternatives are messages in a bottle, bridges in madison county and people whispering in horses' ears, and they are even more depressing. Of course, there are always the memoirs, even more depressing because they aren't fiction--they're people's real misery. Help!
Rating:
Summary: This is one of the worst books I have ever read
Review: Reading Ice Storm was a big waste of my time. The author starts the plot going in one direction, then takes every detour imaginable. Moody starts out with a bedroom scene which only has one person in it, moves on to some psyco babble, then throws in everything he can recall from a day in the burbs in the '70's. If you want to take a small trip down memory lane, visiting all the small wonders of the '70's, i.e., shag carpet, ascots, "key parties", etc., you might find some parts of this book enjoyable. Otherwise, use it for something other than reading pleasure!
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