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A review by ruthiella
An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd
4.0
William Boyd is a great historical fiction writer, but nothing quite measured up to the first book of his that I read: Any Human Heart, however this novel is the closest runner up so far.
Showcasing the absurdity of war, most of the novel is set in what was then German and British East Africa where colonial forces also fought out World War I . In Africa, there are farmers, the expatriate American, Walter Smith, and the half German/half English Erich von Bishop and his unhappy wife, Liesl, each who live just on the other side of the borderline between the two colonies; neighbors until war is declared. In England, the main characters are brothers Felix and Gabriel Cobb. They come from a military family and Gabriel is a newly engaged career soldier but Felix, the youngest, is a petulant teenager who despises the values held by his father and wants to go to Oxford to study.
While not a comedy exactly, the book does have more than a few funny moments and absurd characters (who are probably all completely based on real people – the truth is stranger than fiction). But it also is quite tragic at times – the loss of life in East Africa wasn’t as dramatic as on the battlefields of Europe, but this is about a war and the terrible things that happen to soldiers and civilians caught up in such violent events.
Showcasing the absurdity of war, most of the novel is set in what was then German and British East Africa where colonial forces also fought out World War I . In Africa, there are farmers, the expatriate American, Walter Smith, and the half German/half English Erich von Bishop and his unhappy wife, Liesl, each who live just on the other side of the borderline between the two colonies; neighbors until war is declared. In England, the main characters are brothers Felix and Gabriel Cobb. They come from a military family and Gabriel is a newly engaged career soldier but Felix, the youngest, is a petulant teenager who despises the values held by his father and wants to go to Oxford to study.
While not a comedy exactly, the book does have more than a few funny moments and absurd characters (who are probably all completely based on real people – the truth is stranger than fiction). But it also is quite tragic at times – the loss of life in East Africa wasn’t as dramatic as on the battlefields of Europe, but this is about a war and the terrible things that happen to soldiers and civilians caught up in such violent events.