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A review by lawrenceevalyn
The Ice House by Minette Walters
2.0
The mystery itself was compelling and compellingly presented, but I can't get over my disappointment with the characters. I'm so disappointed that the three central women were not, as they introduced themselves, a lesbian triad. It made it feel like the whole book actually endorsed the homophobic attitudes that the women spent so much time fighting against at the beginning. Instead, the chief "romance" of the book was a witty feminist who was inexplicably seduced by a violent, drunken, miserable man who becomes marginally less violent, drunk, and miserable thanks to her nurturing influence. He choked her! And forcibly kissed her!! Due to his overpowering lust!!! WHAT is meant to be the appeal there??
The novel itself waffled strangely between a wryly feminist understanding of the world as it is (which I can certainly appreciate) and a discordantly misogynist dismissal of several individual women as vapid walking stereotypes. It made our central triad seem complex and interesting not because they, like all women, are human, but because they are "not like other girls".
I think mainly I've learned that books from the 90s haven't aged enough for me to be ready to read them: the gushing description of wall-to-wall white carpet I can accept as reflecting the times, but the characters' worldview is both too alien and too familiar to be anything but distracting. I have better luck with the eighteenth century.
The novel itself waffled strangely between a wryly feminist understanding of the world as it is (which I can certainly appreciate) and a discordantly misogynist dismissal of several individual women as vapid walking stereotypes. It made our central triad seem complex and interesting not because they, like all women, are human, but because they are "not like other girls".
I think mainly I've learned that books from the 90s haven't aged enough for me to be ready to read them: the gushing description of wall-to-wall white carpet I can accept as reflecting the times, but the characters' worldview is both too alien and too familiar to be anything but distracting. I have better luck with the eighteenth century.