‘A darkly comedic tale of adultery that features a dangerously “good” and disciplined heroine’ KIRKUS REVIEWS
‘Throughout her career Bawden has concentrated on the careful depiction of character, feelings and behaviour’ GUARDIAN
At fifteen, Daisy, confident and cherished, is appalled to hear that Ruth’s father locked her in the old garden ice house as a childhood punishment: no wonder her friend shelters in make believe. The revelation of that primitive cruelty cements a friendship in which protection plays no small part. Years later, middle aged, they remain close friends and live on the same street. So when Daisy’s husband dies suddenly, Ruth’s discovery that the marriage was unhappy is the first stage in the unravelling of the certainties she has wrapped around her adult life.
Friendship, love, marriage and above all, the scorching effects of adultery, come under the microscope in this dextrous novel. Journeying from a terrifying suburban household to its unexpected conclusion in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s tombs, The Ice House is startling, tragic and humorous by turns.
‘Throughout her career Bawden has concentrated on the careful depiction of character, feelings and behaviour’ GUARDIAN
At fifteen, Daisy, confident and cherished, is appalled to hear that Ruth’s father locked her in the old garden ice house as a childhood punishment: no wonder her friend shelters in make believe. The revelation of that primitive cruelty cements a friendship in which protection plays no small part. Years later, middle aged, they remain close friends and live on the same street. So when Daisy’s husband dies suddenly, Ruth’s discovery that the marriage was unhappy is the first stage in the unravelling of the certainties she has wrapped around her adult life.
Friendship, love, marriage and above all, the scorching effects of adultery, come under the microscope in this dextrous novel. Journeying from a terrifying suburban household to its unexpected conclusion in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s tombs, The Ice House is startling, tragic and humorous by turns.
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Reviews
Nina Bawden's great talent is to be able to take you along a perfectly ordinary street, rip the façade away and show the strange and passionate events that go on behind closed doors
As in Walking Naked (1982), Bawden again attends the dying falls--and pratfalls--of middle-age . . . with a darkly comedic tale of adultery that features a dangerously good and disciplined heroine
Throughout her career Bawden has concentrated on the careful depiction of character, feelings and behaviour
