The Ice Storm

by Rick Moody, 1994, published by Little Brown and Company, 279 pages.

23 June 2007


This is a harsh diatribe on the state of the American family. The ice storm of the title refers partly to the storm that descends on the US east coast during the winter of 1973, but also to the lack of real, simple, warm love that seems to have descended upon prosperous American families. Moody focuses on two families in the Connecticut town of New Canaan: the Hoods and the Williamses. At the beginning of the story, father Benjamin Hood is having an affair with his neighbor Janie Williams. By the end of the book, their counterparts, Elena Hood and Jim Williams, have also jumped in bed together. But the real story is not the affairs but the environment that nurtures them: an alcohol riddled culture where parents gather together to play seemingly casual adulterous trade-off games (the men throw car keys in a salad bowls and the women fish them out, choosing their mates for the evening), while the children are left home to occupy themselves with television, talking toys, and of course the budding beginnings of their own sexual desire.
Rick Moody’s greatest talent is in giving voice to the children in his story. There is Wendy, who at fourteen is impatient to shed all vestiges of sexual innocence. There’s always a sense that she’s wandering off into deep and dangerous waters, but also a feeling that her nymphomania is driven by something natural and with the potential for fostering goodness. Down in the Williamses’ basement she bargains for sexual favors with schoolmate Mike Williams, demanding boxes of Bazooka Bubblegum in return for going all the way. Later, she helps Mike’s younger brother, Sandy, hang his talking GI Joe doll, and suddenly finds herself unable to resist him. She breaks down his inhibitions with a bottle of vodka, and in the morning imagines that in this prepubescent boy she’s found the love of her life.
We also get to look in the head of Wendy’s older brother, Paul, who’s on his way home for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Paul, too, is obsessed with losing his virginity, but a few years of age has made him more reflective. He draws parallels in his mind between his own crumbling family and the domestic problems of Reed and Sue Richards in the comic book series “Fantastic Four,” which makes for some of the best passages of the book.
If poetic depths can be found in the way these children interact with supposedly childish things, we also have to admit the shallowness of the adult culture in the book, where the platitudes of economist Milton Friedman and est-founder Werner Erhard seem foster a state of perpetual insecurity, a sense that life is about pursuing the best possible deal possible, and that you’re a fool if you settle for what you’ve got.
While this book covers the same territory as John Updike’s “Couples,” it’s a far better book because it is so focused, and because it is able to chronicle not only the selfishness of adults but also the consequences faced by their children.