The Ice Storm

by Rick Moody

Overview

The year is 1973. As a freak winter storm bears down on an exclusive, affluent suburb in Connecticut, cark 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, com 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316706001
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	04/10/2002
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Rick Moody (b. 1961) is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Born in New York City, he graduated from Brown University and earned a master of fine arts in creative writing from Columbia University. His first novel, Garden State, won the Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award, and his memoir of his struggles with alcoholism and depression, The Black Veil, was awarded the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of Memoir. His 1994 bestseller, The Ice Storm, was adapted into a film starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. Moody’s writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, Details, and the New York Times. His work has also been selected for the Best American Stories, Best American Essays, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. His story “The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven” won the Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize. Moody currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at New York University.

Hometown:

New York, NY

Date of Birth:

October 18, 1961

Education:

B.A., Brown University, 1983; M.F.A., Columbia University, 1986

Reading Group Guide

1. Discuss the book's title. Does it signify anything beyond the freak November storm that rages throughout the novel?

2. The Ice Storm is filled with period detail that captures the tone and texture of the 1970's. What might be different about the lives of the Hood and Williams families if their story were unfolding today?

3. Each member of the Hood family acknowledges feeling lonely. What accounts for this prevailing sense of alienation?

4. "Wendy's ambition was to be as unlike her mother as possible in every way." How unusual is such a sentiment in a fourteen-year-old girl? In what ways is Wendy's situation extreme?

5. Rick Moody has been frequently compared with John Cheever and John Updike as a chronicler of suburban American life. Do you think the drama (and comedy) of The Ice Storm is intrinsically suburban? In what ways might story be different if the novel's setting were urban or rural?

6. The Ice Storm is set in the era of the sexual revolution. Discuss the ways in which the radically changing mores of the time are reflected in the lives of each member of the Hood family.

7. The novel is narrated from four different perspectives. Was there one perspective, one series of passages, that you enjoyed reading more than the others? Why?

8. Benjamin Hood explains to his wife that unfaithfulness is "the law of the land." Do you agree with him? Do you think this justifies his adultery?

9. For which of the novel's characters did you feel the greatest sympathy? Why?

10. If members of your reading group have seen the movie The Ice Storm, discuss the ways in which the book and film differ, and the extent to which the film succeeds in capturing the book's essence.

Editorial Reviews

Exhaustive detailing of early 1970s popular/consumer culture in suburban New England provides the context for this archetypal tale of the American nuclear family in decline. The affluent WASP community of New Canaan, Conn., is home to the Hood and Williams families, neighboring two-parent, two-child households built around increasingly dysfunctional marriages. Benjamin Hood, plagued by a loss of importance at work and a growing drinking problem, pursues an ill-fated affair with Janey Williams; his wife, Elena, feels herself losing what little regard she has left for him. Meanwhile, the adolescent children of both families experiment with sex, alcohol and drugs to find identities and to overcome a ponderous sense of alienation. A neighborhood "key party,'' at which couples exchange mates by drawing keys out of a bowl, brings the action to a chaotic climax as an apocalyptic winter storm culminates in physical tragedy to match the emotional damage in the small community. Pop-cultural references of the time, from Hush Puppies to the film Billy Jack, pervade the text. Unfortunately, Moody, winner of the Pushcart Press Editors' Book Award for his first novel, Garden State, tends to use these details in a more encyclopedic than evocative manner. His depiction of these families, however, is insightful and convincing, penetrating the thoughts and fears of each individual. And the central tragedy of his tale remains resonant, though his decrying of our cultural wasteland seems a bit stale. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly