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The Ice Age by Kirsten Reed (view source)
Revision as of 12:54, 20 August 2011
, 12:54, 20 August 2011no edit summary
They drive from town to town, heading aimlessly from one coast to the other. They take drugs. They swear. They sleep side by side but not together (though he always has to muss up the covers on the other bed, lest the maid get the wrong ideas). Their days pass. It's all very unsentimental. You start to wonder where it's going.
This is not the first provocative coming of age story I have read or watched, and invariably they involve younger girls and much older men. [[A Certain Age by Lynne Truss|A Certain Age]] is one, [[An Education by Lynn Barber|An Education]] another. What they seem to have that ''Ice Age'' lacks, however, is a cohesive plot and a raison d'être. Because to me, though yes, the narrator does boast a realistic voice, she's not saying much with it. It's easy to read in a modern, minimalist way, but because there's no developing story my attention wasn't captured and mid-way through I really lost the will to read because it was clear nothing was going to happen.
It's an autobiographical book which is fair enough and does mean that, even with artistic licence, there could be a truthful basis for the stories. That said, just because something is true doesn't mean it's worth writing up and publishing because there's a lot of mundane stuff that goes on in life. Another reviewer hit the nail right on the head when he wrote ''she's not really a bad writer; she just thinks her subject-matter's more worthy and interesting than it is''.