About the Book
Johnny MacKinnon might be on the verge of losing it all. The ice factory he married into, which he’s run for decades, is facing devastating government fines following a mysterious accident and may have to close. The only hope for MacKinnon’s, and the dysfunctional family of employees who depend on them, is that someone in the community saw something – but no one seems to be coming forward.
Then there’s Johnny’s son Corran, back in Scotland. The two haven’t spoken in nearly a year. Corran’s heroin addiction has strained his father’s love and finances, but it was the disappearance of Johhny’s wife Pauline’s engagement ring that finally drove Johnny to breaking point. Now, after a collapse on the factory floor, it appears Johnny may have a brain tumour. He’s been ordered to take it easy, but in some ways, he thinks, what’s left to lose?
With time running out, this may be his last chance to bridge the gap with Corran – and to have any sort of relationship with the baby granddaughter he’s never met.
Format: Paperback (464 pages) Publisher: Grove Press
Publication date: 3rd January 2019 Genre: Contemporary Fiction
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My Review
The Ice House was one of the first books I won in the weekly prize draw from Readers First and I’m now wishing it hadn’t taken me quite so long to get around to reading the book.
The quotation from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!‘ might have been written for Johnny MacKinnon, owner of Bold City Ice. Not only is he facing the possible loss of the family business as a result of fines imposed due to a freak accident but he has recently received the news he has a serious medical condition. Add to that his fractured relationship with Corran, his son by his first wife, Sharon. Oh, and not forgetting an invasion of Cuban tree frogs in his garden.
And Johnny’s not the only one finding their plate is full to overflowing with problems. Pauline, Johnny’s wife, is facing the challenge of running the ice factory in Johnny’s absence, including managing their appeal against the fine for breaches of safety related to the accident. To add to that, her father, Packy, is suffering with dementia. Back in Scotland, Johnny’s birthplace, Corran is recently out of rehab for heroin addiction and trying to balance the demands of caring for his baby daughter alone with holding down a job.
Both Johnny and Pauline find a degree of solace in friendships they form with two young people: Johnny, with Chemal, the stepson of his neighbour Jerry, who he bonds with over their shared love of cars and the TV programme Top Gear; and Pauline with Sam, the young lawyer from the firm the MacKinnons have instructed to handle their appeal, who shares her interest in running.
The author provides some great pen pictures of secondary characters, especially the employees of Bold City Ice. For example, Claire, the super-efficient woman who manages much of the factory administration and is ‘a miracle of competence’, is referred to as the ‘Vice President of Everything’. The factory’s hirsute Operations Engineer, Roy Grassi, is likened to a ‘funny, loyal yeti’ whose beard length seems to correspond to the current state of his love life
Alongside the myriad problems and moments of drama, there is welcome humour. I especially liked the scene in which Pauline imagines applying the concepts she hears about at a marketing conference – deliverables, paradigm shifts, learnings, BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals, for the uninitiated) – to operational meetings back at Bold City Ice.
There is some beautiful writing in the book. I was particularly struck by the following passage in which Johnny ruminates on the differences between the atmosphere of his birthplace, Scotland, and that of his adopted home state, Florida. ‘In Florida, silence was a porous thing, damp and fragile, never quite solidified. Always there was sound, somewhere. Cicadas whirring, rustle of palmettos, rumble of afternoon thunderheads. Pecans dropping through the canopy. Mosquitos buzzing at earlobes. In Scotland, out in the country, the silence was dry, hardened, complete. It was a silence so absolute it was almost deafening, softened only now and again by a cold wind cutting through wide yellow fields of oilseed rape. Johnny also felt that the silence in Scotland was older, perhaps wiser. Florida quiet was restless, wild, as unrestrained and lightsome as a bobcat cub.’
The Ice House is an absorbing exploration of family dynamics and how sometimes it can be way more difficult to fix things than it was to cause them to go wrong in the first place, but that it’s always worth the effort. As Johnny’s doctor observes, “We all keep going, Johnny. We just keep going until we can’t.”
I received a review copy courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First.
In three words: Insightful, assured, tender
Try something similar: A Modern Family by Helga Flatland, trans. by Rosie Hedger
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About the Author
Laura Lee Smith is the author of two novels: The Ice House (2017) and Heart Of Palm (2013), both from Grove Press. Her short fiction was selected by guest editor T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015 and by guest editor Amy Hempel for inclusion in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2010. Her work has also appeared in New England Review, The Florida Review, Natural Bridge, Bayou, and other journals, and she is a frequent contributor to Swamp Radio. She works as an advertising copywriter. (Photo/bio credit: Goodreads)
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