The Country of Ice Cream Star

This may be the most important book I've read all year. Simply because: the protagonist is a 15-year-old African American girl who fights through loss and adversity to save those she loves. Not enough books have this kind of heroine, and the author does a brilliant job of letting the characters reveal themselves over time, instead of giving blatant descriptions of race and physicality. In this dystopian novel, an illness has caused people to die by the ages of 18 or 20. The world, therefore, is run by children. The story is told by Ice Cream Star, and she introduces the reader to the other uniquely-named children in their nomadic band. Her older brother Driver is the leader of their people, but when Driver contracts the deadly illness which shadows their lives, Ice Cream becomes the leader, determined to find a cure. Standing loyally at her side is a man with pale skin and blue eyes - the type of strange person who is known as a "Roo" - and who knows more of the world beyond Ice Cream's people, possibly even where to find a cure. Along with her unlikely helper, Ice Cream is a brave warrior who tenderly watches out for the younger children in her care, calling them by age "my sixes" or "my tens". She is clever, compassionate, and continually thinks of others before herself. Because the world is run by children who die so young, this is a story of teens involved in sex and war, who must make their own rules about everything. I feel that the author deals with these topics in…

It was a very long time ago that I read A Clockwork Orange - but I recall glancing at the glossary, and it being very easy to read from there. This book is Much harder to get used to and the made up patois does not have a glossary. That said, it did get easier the farther I read, and all the words make sense if you pay attention to base words (Mal = bad, etc) or think of dropping a letter or so off of a word (Cember is December). It just may take several times of seeing a particular word before it clicks (I was embarrassed at how it took me 1/3 of the book to realize speaking Panish means Spanish, but once you think this way, it's easy and often obvious). So far as I could tell, there were no breaks in the patois language usage, and that's a huge feat of continuity in writing. This is set 80 years out from a pandemic (spoiler alert!) which seems to be very AIDS like ...' Posies' kills by age 20, so children and teens populate most of this book. Children have been having babies at 12 or 13, and dying off by 20 - lots of things get lost by the wayside in that circumstance, like language and many skills. Ice Cream Star is only 15, but that is an adult age in this setting. She is a strong heroine, and struggles to save her older brother and all of her hunting/warrior tribe from this fatal disease, once she learns that a cure exists and people can live to their 70s with treatment. Things that did seem off to me -- canned food is still good after 80 years? Moths decimate some…

This showed up in a bargain books email list. I found the title intriguing, so I clicked through. As usual, skimmed the reviews to discover the language in which the book is written is very polarizing. Curious, I opened the sample. WOW! Poetry! A French-flavored Creole with a lilt. There is music here, as well as meaning. It reads a little slow and I am just 10% into it, but the images created in my mind are clear and sharp, resonant and real, lasting beyond the page. While I agree that the voice and the patois are tiring, this is different from tiresome. The author forces an immediacy with both and then underscores it with the 1st person present tense. The reader is immersed in Ice Cream's persona and her world. It is a case of sink or swim. I'm glad I found this book. For the reader willing to make the effort, this is turning out to be a rewarding experience. I cannot imagine the concentration needed to maintain the voice, the patois, the POV and the tense, all at once. A bravura performance that every writer should study, if only to reflect on the focus needed to maintain all of this and a well-crafted plot for over 500 pages of writing, rewriting and editing. Thank you, Sandra Newman.

This book is written in a patois combination of French, street slang and English, the language of the people who remain in the US 80 years in the future after a cancer-like illness destroys the population of people over 20 years of age. The language has few connective words, like conjunctions and prepositions, so you do have to make deductions of logic as you read the narration. I have taken quite a bit of French, so the words like preciose ;seriose, and bellesse (describing someone who is beautiful or handsome) and adapted words like mally (from French mal, root of our words malicious and malevolent) and Valey (from valiant for brave) were decipherable for me. Other words, like bone for good and ware from wary, you just have to figure out from context. I found this pretty engaging, but I note that it ruined the flow for many reasons. I like it because it slows me down from the plot long enough to actually take pleasure in the characters, who are sort of dramatized renditions of people and not really believable, and the poetry of the strange language. The kids live in the forest in tribes/extended families, and take care of all their members. There are roving armies of raping pillaging boys, and a community of science kids who have figured out how to have electric lights and hot water. Oh, did I mention that all these people are African American? White people are considered very strange, and called sleepers (all dead) or roos, for the Russians, another marauding group who…

It was a delight to read this well crafted book, told in a consistent melodic creole voice by Young Ice Cream Star. The story walks a line between hope and predestined disaster and yet it promises nothing and delivers just a bit more than one expects from what seems certain to have no happy ending. I especially enjoyed the Latin origin words that were used—bosky—a wooded area, and cavil—to complain about trite things, and other gems. The main character is strong and hard, living in a harsh world, but she’s also kind at heart, in spite of all these kids go though in their short lives. All the kids, even though they kill, torture, experience the worst of life in a world without adults, still care for the littles, without prejudice in a world of gang loyalties. In this they prove better than the adult soldiers who come to recruit them for their senseless wars. Even the cruel social structures the children devise are based on ideas from the adult past—an Army that treats girls as Nameless whites, a Christian tribe in which one make leader has many wives, and a large structure based on a perverted idea of Catholicism, and a cult of marines guarding Washington DC. It all seems quite reasonable that they should cling to these remnants from the last as they look for a way to structure their gangs in a way that makes sense to them. Author Sandra Newman is also a delight to follow on Twitter