The Ice Storm

Plot summary

The novel takes place over Thanksgiving weekend 1973, during a dangerous ice storm and centers on two neighboring families, the Hoods and the Williamses, and the difficulties they have dealing with the tumultuous political and social climate of the day, in affluent suburban Connecticut, during the height of the sexual revolution. The novel is narrated from four different perspectives, each of them a member of the two families, who are promoting their own opinion and views of the several complications that arise throughout the novel, including their encounters and daily life. The Hood family is overridden with lies: Ben is currently in an affair with his married neighbor Janey, his wife Elena is alienated, her daughter ventures on her own sexual liaisons with both females and males of her age, including her neighbors Mikey and Sandy.

The Hoods are Ben, Elena, Paul and Wendy and the Williamses are Jim, Janey, Mikey, and Sandy. The story focuses on the 24 hours when a major ice storm strikes the town of New Canaan, Connecticut, just as both families are melting down from the parents' alcoholism, escapism and adultery, and their children's drug use and sexual experimentation.

Characters

Themes and analysis

The novel explores the loss of innocence and moral compass in middle-upper class Americans. Its themes find their reflection in the setting: the 1970s at the time of the Watergate scandal in the wake of the sexual revolution. Themes include secrets, permissiveness, vulnerability, betrayal, and absence. Youthful characters engage in sexual experimentation as their parents pursue affairs and otherwise absent themselves from their lives. The rapidly changing sexual mores of the period are reflected in the lives of both families, whose members experiment with traditionally taboo sexual acts such as incest and adultery.

Critical reception

The Ice Storm was largely commended for its audacity and the many daring subjects explored in the novel. Critic Adam Begley of the Chicago Tribune called the novel: "A bitter and loving and damning tribute to the American family.... This is a good book, packed with keen observation and sympathy for human failure" while The Guardian called it "one of the wittiest books about family life ever written." Amanda Heller of The Boston Globe stated "Moody brings this profusion of metaphor to order with a fierce, subversive intelligence. His characters, drawn with a manic acuity that isn't fully accounted for until the end, stay with us long after we've finished reading."

The novel was a moderate success commercially; however its sales were boosted in 1997 with the release of the film adaptation.

Film adaptation

The film adaptation The Ice Storm featured a cast including Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire and Elijah Wood. The film was a succès d'estime as an art house film and critically acclaimed despite a poor box office, however it gained a modest reception on subsequent home video releases. While remaining more or less faithful to the book, some details were changed. Most notably, Weaver and Jamey Sheridan's characters were named Janey and Jim Carver, while in Moody's book, their surname was Williams.

Influences

The author Junot Diaz claims to have received the idea for the deep structure for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao from this book.