Ice Cream - Hardcover

Dunmore, Helen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802117333 ISBN 13: 9780802117335

Publisher: Grove Pr, 2002

Synopsis

In a collection of short works by the author of The Siege and A Spell of Winter, a cafeteria cook confronts her pen pal, a boastful writer is put in his place, a future government ruthlessly controls conception, and a soulful woman remembers her past.

About this title

Reviews

Having made her reputation on these shores with literary gothic novels (A Spell of Winter, etc.), British writer Dunmore last year demonstrated her versatility with The Siege, a novel of startling realism and clarity, set in St. Petersburg (then known as Leningrad) during WWII. Her second short story collection (the first to be published here) further testifies to the wide range of her interests, imagination and narrative voice. The 17 stories are all quite short and have in common a remarkable ability to encapsulate character, situation and landscape in prose that shimmers with sensuous detail. The most chilling entry, "The Fag," is a variation on The Handmaid's Tale. In a repressive future society, a couple dares to defy the state's Genetic Code for conceiving children. "Emily's Ring" gathers horror as a young girl is doomed to a lifetime of guilt. Life in a small English village is illuminated in "Coosing," in which an abusive bully warns his wife not to apprise the intended victim of his bigotry. Other stories strike a lighter note. It's fun to watch the protagonist of the title story-a woman who's beautiful, thin and famous-succumb to the lure of comfort food. Other narratives portray food as a balm and benediction, or carry a hopeful message of connection, as in "My Polish Teacher's Tie." There's a touch of the surreal in "Mason's Mini-Break," which revolves around an encounter on the Yorkshire moors, and in a parking meter's message in "Be Vigilant, Rejoice, Eat Plenty." Dunmore's touch is light, but her stories slice through her readers' defenses like laser beams.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Just as her novels transport readers from heat and sensuality (Talking to the Dead), to a sense of impending menace (Your Blue-Eyed Boy), to piercing cold and gnawing starvation in wartime Leningrad (The Siege), so do these stories offer up a panoply of emotion, atmosphere, and character. Food-both the inability to eat (owing to illness, pregnancy, or anorexia) and the appreciation of or longing for it-also figures prominently. In the delicious title story, a famous model celebrating her birthday fantasizes about the heady perfumes, tastes, and textures of ice cream while her personal trainer exhorts her to stick to her brutal diet regime. In two chilling stories, Dunmore shows that she can move easily between time periods. In "Emily's Ring," set during the Victorian age, an elder sister charged with chaperoning her siblings on a swimming expedition for their health is attracted to a fellow bather and loses sight of one of the youngsters. In the futuristic "Leonardo, Michelangelo, Superstork," couples risk prison terms by purchasing genetically engineered embryos. Dunmore uses her formidable imagination and intelligence to create stories that provoke, unsettle, amuse, and glow. Highly recommended for public libraries.
Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Kingston, ON
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

There is an elegant simplicity, an elegiac sensitivity in Dunmore's scintillating collection of richly executed short stories. Ranging from expectant anthems of liberation to emotionless analyses of subjugation, they startle with shrewd revelations as gentle as whispers, as frightening as ghosts. Like a magician adept at the art of distraction, Dunmore catches the reader off guard with sharp yet subtle surprises, as in "Leonardo, Michelangelo, Superstork," a presumptive morality tale about the future of the human race; or leads readers first in one direction then suddenly shifts them elsewhere, as in "You Stayed Awake with Me." With a deft and delicate touch, Dunmore excels at slyly interposing the banal with the bizarre, at cleverly exposing forbidden pleasures and forgotten passions. Her characters are simply drawn yet fully revealed, their malaise barely present yet bitterly palpable. A masterfully skilled and astute observer of the human condition, Dunmore communicates her impressions with an economy of language that succinctly conveys all the deceptive drama found in the ordinary lives of her characters. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802117333
• ISBN 13: 9780802117335
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224