- Library Binding
- Publisher: San Val (January 1991)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1417710772
- ISBN-13: 978-1417710775
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
An abandoned boy with fish-like features stows away on a trawler manned by a deranged crew of outcasts and oddities.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
This slim volume collects ten stories, including a few award-winners, and some previously published in Esquire, Antaeus, and The Quarterly. Together, they introduce a redneck poet with a gothic sensibility and a taste for white-trash slapstick. One of Richard's no-counts is so lowdown that his name is "Uncle Trash," and he's supposed to watch his rambunctious nephews while their daddy lits out after their runaway mother. But the card-playing, Champale-chugging miscreant so neglects the boys that they manage to burn down the house in a conflagration worthy of Rube Goldberg ("Strays"). Equally hilarious, "Happiness of the Garden Variety" follows the wild antics of two good ole boys as they try to dispose of their landlord's dead horse, a nasty beast who dies a flatulent death. Richard's boyish narrators attend to the darker side of life on the bayou as well: one (in "On the Rope") records his grandfather's horrifying memories of a flood with biblical dimensions, a scene reminiscent of Faulkner's Wild Palms; another (in "This is Us, Excellent") fires his imagination with TV derring-do, and casually attests to being battered along with his brother and mother by his ugly-mean father. Death haunts a number of tales here: in "Her Favorite Story," a hapless fellow who lives in a backwoods cabin reverts to an even more primitive state after his relic-hunting lover dies. The title piece includes a mercy-killing of the narrator's father-in-law, a seaman whose wife shoots him nine times, explaining "one was for love, and the other eight were for something Bill said to me over dinner in front of company in nineteen sixty-six." Weaker narratives about a potbellied Romeo ("Genius") and a boy who thinks he's a fish ("Fish-boy") sacrifice meaning for atmosphere. Others prove that living seaside can be dangerous for those with a nose for drugs ("The Theory of Man"), but the remote tidewater towns can also harbor the outcast - "Feast of the Earth, Ransom of the Clay" is a somber poem to the local lunatic, a man who lives in a cave near Cemetery Ridge, eats refuse, wears cat-skins, and shows up for every funeral. Richard's slack-jawed narrators charm the pants off, and his raw-boned ones kick you in the butt - either way, he's a bold and outrageous talent. (Kirkus Reviews)
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ice at the Bottom of the World,
By
This review is from: The Ice at the Bottom of the World: Stories (Paperback)
I've never read a short story collection like this one. I've since read it dozens of times and have sought out everything written by Mark Richard. The most frustrating thing about his books is that he doesn't write them fast enough.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Macabre, hilarious, desperate, heartwarming,
By
This review is from: The Ice at the Bottom of the World: Stories (Paperback)
Macabre, hilarious, desperate, heartwarming, Mark Richard's collection is stunning in its stark juxtaposition of a gamut of emotions and moods. The prose is sparse, and all the more evocative because of it. The world Richard depicts is itself sparse - his characters take their comfort where they can. It is a world of immense cruelty and immensely harsh beauty. There is pain in this washed out, painted over landscape of mudflats, fairgrounds and burning shacks, but also a piercing redemptive vision. As I read I found the first story superlative, then the next, then the next, right to the end. Books may not change your life, but this one may well leave its images searing your imagination for a long time. When I consider the lack of attention Mark Richard has received for his fiction, I'm tempted to believe there's no justice in the world at all, but then I realise that for such a gem of a book to exist at all is a kind of secret miracle. Witness it while you can.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shame on Doubleday,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Ice at the Bottom of the World: Stories (Paperback)
Mark Richard is simply the best current short story writer (with some competition from Tom Franklin). While no single story in this collection rivals Richard's "masterpiece," the story BIRDS FOR CHRISTMAS collected in CHARITY, each piece is subtle, precise, brilliant.However, the overall enjoyment of the book is hampered somewhat by the shameful job performed by the publisher (Doubleday). ICE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD feels like it's printed on two-ply paper towels shoved between dry cleaning shirt cardboards which serve as the cover. You worry something must be wrong with the book because the publisher did such a cost cutting - dismissive job in producing it.
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