Book Review: "The Ice Harvest" by Scott Phillips (2000)

Image result for the ice harvest book

I like to read and write noir/crime fiction, so years ago a buddy of mine recommended I watch the movie The Ice Harvest (2005) with John Cusak and Billy Bob Thornton. It was so long ago I can't even remember what I thought of the movie (which probably means it sucked). Anyway, I was in the used bookstore the other day and found a copy of the book so I figured what the heck.

This book is such amateurish garbage, I don't even understand how it got published in the first place. Frankly, it reads like some of my first attempts at fiction: the characters go from place to place having meaningless conversations and not really accomplishing anything, and then by the time something starts to "happen" the book is over. This book is divided into Parts I & II (evenly) and the entire Part I is unnecessary.

I'm not going to say it's not at least somewhat fun to read about characters getting drunk and going from bar to bar, acting like idiots on Christmas eve in suburban Kansas, reminiscing about old times, making uninvited appearances at family gatherings, going to strip clubs and watching people get into fights, but the first part of this book has no plot. None. You don't even know what the character wants or is looking for. For that matter, the characters are so one-dimensional and similar, you can't even tell who is talking at any one point. It's like all the characters are one big amoeba that just gets called by different names.

I also cannot deny there are moments of genuine fun and suspense in this book, but Phillips takes so goddam long to get to them and the whole book is so vastly under-cooked. I just can't believe an agent or a publisher looks up from reading this manuscript and says, "We've got a hit, boys!" This strikes me as a first draft. Hell, if this is what got published, I can't imagine what the first draft looked like!

As a fiction writer, this kind of book drives me nuts because it violates all the guidelines I've been taught to work within and taught myself to work within. But I mean really basic things such as that there has to be (I don't know, just off the top of my head) some kind of conflict, tension, a plot, and maybe even some character development in a story. I'm not talking about real "limiting" rules here, folks! Furthermore, it's not like it violates those rules and it's good...that would be one thing. It violates those rules and it sucks. And it still got published! Hell, a movie was made from this book. It won awards!

Two things I think account for this: 1.) Scott Phillips must have had some connections in the media industry from working in TV, and/or wrote this book specifically with an eye toward getting a movie made out of it, and with an eye toward who would buy it, 2.) I have a sense there was something peculiar to the very late 90s that allowed this book to get published, some literary or cultural trend, but I'd have to think about it more and read some literary criticism from that time.

Comments

Popular Posts