The Ice Beneath You: A Novel [Paperback]

Christian Bauman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2002

Just as The Things They Carried and Catch-22 spoke to their generations with truth and dark humor, this brilliant first novel defines the experience of war for its era.

Benjamin Jones, twenty-three, discharged after an army tour in Somalia, heads cross-country on a Greyhound, seeking refuge on the West Coast. He has left behind his best friend, Trevor, and Liz Ross, a female soldier with whom Jones has fallen in love. But Jones has also left behind a tragedy -- a horrible, split-second action made in Somalia -- that Trevor, Jones, and the army have implicitly agreed to forget.

Alone on the streets of San Francisco, and then north on the Washington coast, Jones finds that an uneducated ex-soldier is qualified only as a peep show fantasy object or as a hired hand to a bottom-feeding smuggler and pornographer. Recurring visions of his life as a soldier gradually reveal the full truth -- and agony -- of his experience, and a reunion with Liz and a violent confrontation with Trevor bring the young soldier's journey to a wrenching conclusion -- but one not without hope.

At equal turns tense, brutal, and poetic, The Ice Beneath You is a soldier's story for a time when there weren't supposed to be any more soldiers' stories.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This sterling first novel offers a study in quiet tension and contemporary social malaise through the prism of postmodern military life. Ben Jones, a disillusioned fry-cook, impulsively leaves his wife and child and enlists in the U.S. Army. After a hellish stint in boot camp at Fort Knox, he is transported to Somalia, where he is assigned to the Army's Waterborne unit and becomes part of a boat crew guarding the U.N. effort to feed and stabilize that volatile nation. Jones teams up with boot camp buddy Trevor Anuscewitz, called "Alphabet," and continues his conflicted relationship with another fellow soldier, Liz Ross, who seems to return his affections, although there is more camaraderie than romance between them. In the course of their duty, Jones and Alphabet become involved in a tragic incident the substance of which has become commonplace for Western troops sent to remote and unstable corners of the globe. After the incident is "hushed up," Jones and Alphabet return to the States, where Jones drifts around the country and Trevor attempts to exorcise the demons that haunt his nightmares. Bauman's style is terse, candid and on target with both language and circumstances. His close analysis of character motivation lends extra tension to an already suspenseful account of soldiers caught up in a confused struggle for survival, a game in which the rules constantly change and where the world seems distant and, for the most part, insane. Too many shifts back and forth in time muddle the novel's effect rather than contributing to the sense of dislocation, but this is in almost every respect a fine first effort, a war story for the new millennium. Agent, Diana Finch, Ellen Levine Agency. (Oct.)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Hubert Selby, Jr. author of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream Beautifully crafted, structured, and simple...It is a pleasure to read the work of a real writer. Thank you Mr. Bauman.

Richard Wertime author of Citadel on the Mountain A remarkable debut...a tense, razor-edged, powerful effort...This is a book that will hold you.

Don De Grazia author of American Skin An important book -- a profound meditation on the stark realities of the American male experience. The truths of soldiering are brilliantly examined here from angles previously unexplored, but this is not so much a war novel as it is an exploration of the human heart. The writing is beautiful and deft, and displays an almost religious devotion to unwavering honesty.

Scott Anderson author of Triage and The Man Who Tried to Save the World Bauman renders the true spirit of men at war -- not just the frustrations and fear that come with operating over a dangerous landscape but also the deep bonds that tie men and women together through such experiences. With both humor and compassion, he captures well the deeper wounds that such places can inflict.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 234 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743227840
• ISBN-13: 978-0743227841
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,005,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

From the June 15, 2010 broadcast of public radio's Writer's Almanac as read by Garrison Keillor: It's the birthday of folksinger and writer Christian Bauman, born in Easton, Pennsylvania (1970). He's the author of three widely praised novels, all published within the past decade: The Ice Beneath You (2002), Voodoo Lounge (2005), and In Hoboken (2008).

Though his mom was a doctor and his stepdad a philosophy professor, the boy didn't do well at academics. He barely graduated from high school and never went to college. He became a teenage father and worked as a cook, a clerk, a copy writer, and in all sorts of manual labor jobs. He painted houses, he spent a Philadelphia winter perched on scaffolding working on windows of a tall old school building, and he later watered plants at a corporate office, where he'd time his entry into the executive dining room so that he could help himself to the end of the lunch buffet.

He was 21, impoverished, in debt, without health insurance, and his young daughter needed an operation he couldn't afford. He began to pay attention to Army recruitment commercials. He said he joined the Army "for the same reason most people join the Army." He said, "I was young and poor. I had a child to support and no real job prospects. I wanted to escape. But what clinched it was when I found out the Army would pay for the operation my daughter needed."

He trained at Fort Eustis, in Virginia, where he was the only newly enlisted guy getting The New Yorker magazine. When he was shipped off to Somalia in 1992, he brought his typewriter along.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Christian Bauman-- A New Writer To Watch..., September 17, 2002

By 

Jonathan Colcord (Concord, NH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ice Beneath You: A Novel (Paperback)

This great first novel is a profound statement about the humanity within the modern soldier, friendships, and the many strange detours life holds in store for a young man without a plan. It is the story of 23-year old Benjamin Jones, a soldier finishing up a harrowing tour of duty during the 1993 war in Somalia in one of the few remaining U.S. Army gunboat units.
Bauman tells his story through often nonsequential passages that delve deep into the mind of Jones, further building on the psyche of the character.
This is a soldier's story, but is often more about life than soldiering. Early in the story, we find Jones shortly after his discharge, on a cross-country journey aboard a Greyhound bus. Often, through a hazy stream of consciousness we meet the many characters accompanying him on his bus journey as Jones lapses between exhaustion, half-sleep and deep thought.
Jones pensive friendship with fellow soldier and best friend Trevor (who decides to reenlist), and constant thoughts of Liz, his female obession provide a current that brings the reader in and out of the bus journey much as it does Jones as he ponders his life in between stops.
Incredibly candid, and never boring, Bauman's story puts his character into many unexpected places, yet remains incredibly true to the experience of so many young men searching to find their way.
To the reader who believes they know what sort of man joins the military and endures violent conflict will be pleasantly surprised, and cast aside all stereotypes. The Ice Beneath You is an incredibly well-written, wonderfully layered story, while remaining simple and avoiding the cliches expected from fiction when war and men are featured alongside one another.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, November 6, 2002

By 

Reader (Ny, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ice Beneath You: A Novel (Paperback)

this is the highest quality writing, where simplicity is the forte. unlike the various guises of genius in joyce or nabokov, bauman relies simply on the story/character at hand and some subtle but VERY effective writing techniques. i often vascillate between fiction and non fiction, fiction always feeling a little too contrived, but this is a STRONG pull for fiction. most writers should take it as a lesson, and then a pleasure.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Former waterborne, October 26, 2006

By 

J. Stine - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ice Beneath You: A Novel (Paperback)

Being a former waterborne soldier, I ordered both books by Bauman. Bauman definitely has related the experiences of a waterborne soldier and the experiences of a soldier transitioning into the civilian world. I was amazed at his accurate portrayal of reasons why soldiers enlist, why they risk their lives defending what others think is important, and the difficulty of transitioning into the civilian world. Memories came flooding back when he mentioned the Gasthaus and experiences in the barracks.. Experiences mentioned are very truthful. Although fictional, Bauman has captured the essence of the waterborne soldier.