In these ten stories, Mark Richard, winner of the 1990 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award, emerges as the heir apparent to Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner.
The Ice at the Bottom of the World: Stories
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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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In Richard's collection of short stories, we are in familiar but updated Faulkner/Caldwell territory, the gothic American South. Specifically, we are in the country of that endangered species, the redneck. In sharply detailed stories presented without excuse or judgment, and often with a sharp bite of humor, Richard offers creditable characters in the middle of their singular lives. In the complex title story, Powell has come to ask Bill Doodlum for his daughter's hand, "second-hand as it was, a little legal holdover from the mixed-up-divorce-from-Tommy-John." As the two men sit in the garage drinking beer, the reader learns about the Doodlums of Doodlum County and the Carters of Carter County, and also learns why, when Bill's wife shoots him, his death is recorded as a suicide. Though full of peculiarly Southern connections, these stories transcend Southern particularity. They are about universals: love and loss and birth and death. --Marcia Tager, Tenafly, N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Format: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.
By R. Griffiths
Format: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.
By A Customer
Format: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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4.7 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Richard is one of the best
Bravo to the previous customer, but I would like to add a collection to his list from a writer in his own back yard. Read more
Published on Nov 4 1998
5.0 out of 5 stars
1 of the 10 Great Story Collections of the late 20th Century
The other nine are Allan Gurganus' "White People;" Lorrie Moore's "Like Life;" William Vollmann's "Rainbow Stories;" Robert Olen Butler's "Good... Read more
Published on April 2 1998
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