The Ice Age
By Kirsten Reed
Text Publishing
Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino
The comparisons with Lolita are too overwhelming not to mention straight off. In The Ice Age an older man and an under-age girl drive the highways of America, eating in bad diners, sharing the same bed in sleazy motels, taking drugs together. But Kirsten Reed’s road-trip novel differs from the Nabokov classic in crucial and obvious ways. For a start it’s told entirely from the teenaged girl’s point of view. She’s obsessed with the older man Gunther, with the graceful, practised way he rolls a joint, with the things he says and the mystery of him. For her he’s a safe place in a big confusing world. Together they travel the country, dropping in from time to time on his eclectic and eccentric bunch of friends.
There are a lot of mysteries in this novel. Why is the teenage girl on the run? What exactly is Gunther up to? Reed doesn’t bother trying to answer them. Her narrative lives in the present, just like most teenagers.
The unnamed protagonist is sassy and smart. She’s at the first kisses, first rebellions stage of life where most adults seem like idiots and trouble is easy to find. Bad things do happen to her over the course of the story but there’s no sense of her being a victim nor preyed upon by Gunther, even though the minute she’s legal, their relationship does get physical.
This is Reed’s first novel. A visual artist, she was born in the US and spent part of her upbringing in New Zealand before settling in Brisbane. The Ice Age is targeted at the young adult market which is interesting as its themes are very adult and there is one particularly disturbing scene. But it is very much a story of this moment – there are even the seemingly obligatory references to vampires and zombies dotted through with the heroine fantasising that Gunther, with his sharp teeth and white skin, might be about to bite her and pull her over to the other side.
An assured debut, The Ice Age is a compelling and memorable story. Reed is an insightful writer who has captured perfectly the moment a girl shifts from child to adult. The age gap relationship is handled in such a way that it never seems creepy and the teenage girl’s voice is more than credible. Still if I had a young daughter I’m not entirely sure I’d encourage her to read this….
Footnote:By Kirsten Reed
Text Publishing
Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino
The comparisons with Lolita are too overwhelming not to mention straight off. In The Ice Age an older man and an under-age girl drive the highways of America, eating in bad diners, sharing the same bed in sleazy motels, taking drugs together. But Kirsten Reed’s road-trip novel differs from the Nabokov classic in crucial and obvious ways. For a start it’s told entirely from the teenaged girl’s point of view. She’s obsessed with the older man Gunther, with the graceful, practised way he rolls a joint, with the things he says and the mystery of him. For her he’s a safe place in a big confusing world. Together they travel the country, dropping in from time to time on his eclectic and eccentric bunch of friends.
There are a lot of mysteries in this novel. Why is the teenage girl on the run? What exactly is Gunther up to? Reed doesn’t bother trying to answer them. Her narrative lives in the present, just like most teenagers.
The unnamed protagonist is sassy and smart. She’s at the first kisses, first rebellions stage of life where most adults seem like idiots and trouble is easy to find. Bad things do happen to her over the course of the story but there’s no sense of her being a victim nor preyed upon by Gunther, even though the minute she’s legal, their relationship does get physical.
This is Reed’s first novel. A visual artist, she was born in the US and spent part of her upbringing in New Zealand before settling in Brisbane. The Ice Age is targeted at the young adult market which is interesting as its themes are very adult and there is one particularly disturbing scene. But it is very much a story of this moment – there are even the seemingly obligatory references to vampires and zombies dotted through with the heroine fantasising that Gunther, with his sharp teeth and white skin, might be about to bite her and pull her over to the other side.
An assured debut, The Ice Age is a compelling and memorable story. Reed is an insightful writer who has captured perfectly the moment a girl shifts from child to adult. The age gap relationship is handled in such a way that it never seems creepy and the teenage girl’s voice is more than credible. Still if I had a young daughter I’m not entirely sure I’d encourage her to read this….
Nicky Pellegrino, in addition to being a succcesful author of popular fiction, (her latest The Italian Wedding was published two months ago), is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 5 July.
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