Customer Reviews

The Snow Garden: A Novel

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Christopher Rice's second novel is everything that you expect from a young, precocious and ambitious author. Problem is, that is NOT a good thing. While "The Snow Garden" does have a fair amount going for it - as a mystery, the final third kicks into high gear - the book leans heavily towards pretentious. While, as a gay man, I like that gay characters can be presented as protagonists, Rice seems more intent on making them mouthpieces for his own philosophies. And please, spare me any more writings that think all straight guys will go down if they just meet the right man? Augh!

But it also means that you are slogging through two thirds of a mystery that plods like flip-flops in the slush. Some of the twists are more than a little preposterous (the disappearance of Jesse made me stop and double-back to see if I'd missed something), characters underdeveloped and hackneyed, unnecessary sub-plots slip in and are discarded, and as others have noted, the proof-readers of my hardback edition must have been tipping at the Scotch too often. Genders switch, as does a character name at one point. Forget minor errors, this was the speed reading equivalent of nailing a pot-hole. Quite frankly, if there wasn't a famous last name attached here (hey, it was what first drew me in), "The Snow Garden" would likely be spoken of as a sophomore outing by a promising writer who needed to lose the pretensions. Here's hoping Christopher Rice does a little woodshedding before book three.

Christopher Rice's writing has nothing to do with his mother, the notorious Anne Rice. There, it's said. They have two totally separate styles of writing and different ways of establishing mood - Anne's is a florid and descriptive style, Christopher appears to rely more on enigmatic character interaction to set the mood. That is all, no arguing.

Now, on with the review. 'The Snow Garden' tells the story of Randall and Kathryn, two friends from college, each struggling to come to terms with dark secrets from their respective troubled pasts. Part coming-of-age tale, part murder-mystery, part gay in-jokes and stereotyping, a potentially strong narrative becomes mired and wasted in what is essentially 400+ pages of overly emotive dialogue.

As a second novel, 'The Snow Garden' isn't too bad, being neither better nor worse than his first, 'A Destiny of Souls'. The principal characters, too, are of a type - tortured, moody, self-important adolescents with tangible egos - but are clearly identifiable. Shame, then, that Rice hasn't made them in the slightest bit endearing, opting instead for an almost comedic stereotyping. There are traces here and there of a strong narrative, stemming from a very well-concieved murder-mystery, but unfortunately a decent idea for a plot can't compensate for the cast of thousands of thoroughly soulless, one-dimensional characters.

The problem with Rice's second novel is that after a hundred pages or so, we begin to feel a sense of what is unmistakably a personal vendetta - Rice wants us desperately to agree with his apparently personal views on pansexuality - and this is where the novel begins to grind to a halt. Rehashing the same experiences for all of his characters over and over again, reading Rice's words becomes a chore, and it really isn't until the final fifty pages or so that anything major happens in the story, by which time we're scanning paragraphs so quickly that we don't really care. The sub-plot explaining why Kathryn is so emotionally stunted is not properly explored, with the most cursory of nods to why she feels the way she does. Randall's past (and the whole climax of the book) comes to light in such a stagey, theatrical fashion that it rings totally false, and we cannot easily believe that a teen with such a dramatic life could now be so totally unengaging. He drinks and smokes, presumably to indicate a sense of living-on-the-edge cool, but Rice never seems to give us a decent, believable reason for it.

In face, it's this proposed sense of gritty, urbane coolness that is the major flaw with 'The Snow Garden'. We can't believe that these characters could have come from anywhere other than a spoiled, upper-class background, and we like them all the less for it. Beverly Hills 9021-snore. Hopefully, future novels won't be crammed full of pedantic and unbelievable characters, and Rice's essentially sound plotlines will be allowed to shine through.

What a tedious, poorly written, more poorly edited read this was! I kept plugging away thinking there'd be something redeeming sooner or later. There wasn't.

After reading Rice's first book and enjoying it and I thought I'd give his second one a try. Unfortunately it seems as though he's run into a sophomore jinx.

His book starts off promisingly and he begins to create a plot that does capture your attention. But as you read further, you begin to wonder what exaclty Rice wants the reader to be paying attention to. He jumps so often between the characters and their thoughts that you're not sure which character is offering just opinions and which one is offering facts.

Also, I think Rice had so much riding on the whole "revelation" process at the end of the story that he leaves many holes in the parts leading up to it. Rice tries to create a sense of "mystery" around his characters by leaving many parts of their past a secret, but in the end, he just creates very shallow characters that are completely unrelatable.

The ending appears to have been just thrown together. A lot of the "secrets" that are explained seem to come out of nowhere. And in the end there just seemed to be too much info coming at me at once. Also, I think there were just too many characters.

It's a well written book. Rice uses words well and does have a creative style. His content, on the other hand does need a little fine tuning. He needs to learn how to pace his stories better and not rely so much on the whole "revelation" process to create drama. And subtley is not his forte, either.

For the record, let me say that Christopher Rice's previous novel, A Density of Souls, is my favorite book.

That said, The Snow Garden was not at all what I thought it would be. Where to begin?

First, there are at least a dozen storylines going on at one time. It wasn't hard keeping track of them, but they weren't linked at all. I kept telling myself "Sooner or later he's going to have to show the connections between these." He never did.

It's hard without giving anything in the book away, but let's just say that there is WAY more information than there needs to be.

Also, the reasoning behind the characters actions, or their motives, is never really told you directly. I could tell you HOW all of the events happened, but I couldn't tell you WHY they happened.

There is also the fact of the punctuatuion, grammar, and storyline errors. In the epilouge, "Tim" is written where "Ken" should be and don't even get me started on the comma usage. The biggest glich, in my eyes, is when Randall says that he was molested as a child. However, later in the book, it is suddenly jesse who was molested when he was young.

If you are looking for another A Density of Souls, you won't find it here. Unlike Density, I didn't find this one fun to read.

If you are really desperate to read it, get it from the library or borrow it from a friend. Don't pay the money.

Mr. Rice does not live up to his name with this book. Even the most predictable of his mother's stories could still be gripping and intense. As for this book, I found myself completely disinterested in the highly dislikable characters from about a quarter of the way through. The beginning is fairly interesting, though is ultimately a set-up for what is possibly the lamest motive motive for homicide I've read in several years. Then our lovely duckies fuddle around a college campus for a while, visit several other key, dull areas, sexual overtones intensify, and the story comes to its predictable, threadbare close after far too many pages that seemed merely filler. I am impressed by the fact that so many previous reviewers enjoyed it.

A good thriller, to me, is edgy and provocative enough to leave its reader feeling slightly uncomfortable and pushed to a personal limit, in just the way we as an audience enjoy. This book took many cheap shots to achieve that end, usually with its homosexual themes. Homoeroticism admittedly has a time-honored place in arts and literature (a topic this book superficially explores with its college professor character), but there are several scenes that read more like third-rate porn than literature. I would call these cheap shots, thrilling some readers while making others squirm. But as I wrote before, lots of people seemed to enjoy the book. I wouldn't call it the most boring book I've read, but I would say it makes for a predictable and generally unpleasant read.

I finished The Snow Garden in two days and honestly my first thought after reading the last page was "I need mental therapy." Christopher Rice has created the most darkly disturbing, graphic, twisted vision of the hellish side of human nature. Because of this I found it sometimes a difficult read, after some parts I had to put down the book for a few seconds to comprehend what I had just read. My main dislike of the book was the extreme lack of hope. In his first novel, A Density of Souls, Rice crafted an equally spell-binding view of the darknesss of humanity but held a sense of love and ended on a note of hope, however The Snow Garden lacks this view of hope, the one exception being the character of Kathryn (who also in my view was the only truly sympathetic character). Yet, despite this, I loved the book. It gripped me immediately, immersing me in a nightmarish world that although disturbing, was also compelling. Sort of like the same reaction you get from viewing the movie, Silence of the Lambs, it's a unsettling experience but also pure artistry that is amazing. The world and characters of The Snow Garden are engraved in your mind, unforgettable. I admire Christopher Rice, not many writers this young would take such huge risks, but his risks largely pay off. The Snow Garden is an unique, great read, if you're up to the chaotic world it portrays. Looking forward to his next project!

Incredibly T...E...D...I...O...U...S... I have seldom had so much trouble finishing a book. I was just so bored. I don't deny that college students have lots of pointless, meandering conversations about philosophy and the future. I just don't care to read them word for word. Then there was the plot, which just fizzled. Once you find out what happens to the characters, you'll not only be confused, you just won't care. Save your money and read something by Anne Rice instead.

What happened between "A Density of Souls" and "The Snow Garden"?? Rice mentions in his acknowledgements that he was writing this book "during a time of transition in my life..." - boy, I guess.

This is a story that could easily have been told in about half the pages it took. The story drags and lags and uses up far too much paper in unneccessary character exposition.

The story line is interesting, don't get me wrong. I finished the book and was not disappointed by the twisted ending, but the story takes a good, solid 300 pages to even get moving - by the time it has, you're just simply looking forward to the last page.

Finally, I was shocked at the number of mispellings and other gramatical errors that made it past the editors (in the hardcover edition, anyway.) This book was obviously a rush job. Hopefully Christopher will get through this bout of youthful prattling and get back to what we know he CAN do based on his first novel.

The book opens with the mysterious death of Pamela Milford in an icy creek (actually a drainage ditch) that runs through Atherton University in March of 1983. The why and wherefore of this young woman's death is the first secret and the driving force in this book of secrets.

Jumping forward to November 2001, we are introduced to three freshmen at Atherton trying to escape from dark, haunted secrets of their pasts. Randall is openly gay with the looks of a male fashion model and is having an affair with one of his married professors. Kathryn is his best friend; straight but affectionately called the Ice Queen for obvious reasons. And Jesse, Randall's roommate is a typical hetero hunk with strange ulterior motives behind his many sexual conquests.

Their old secrets are very slow in being revealed while new secrets keep popping up. Since Kathryn won't have anything to do with men other than gay Randall, is she a lesbian? Why won't Randall take his clothes off in front of Jesse while the lights are on? And does Kathryn hate Jesse so much because she's afraid he's trying to seduce Randall?

Finally, the secrets of 2001 come face to face with the secrets of 1983, when the wife of the professor Randall is sleeping with is killed when her car crashes into that same icy creek/drainage ditch as before. Is there some connection? Is the new death murder?

Soon the past and present become more entwined and the secrets are finally revealed in bits, pieces, emails and newspaper clippings. The third and final part of the book becomes a real page-turner as you race to the conclusion searching to find out not who the murder is, but who will survive?

Christopher Rice is an extremely talented young writer and hopefully someday people will review his work without mention of his famous mother and father. I enjoyed his book very much, however I was totally lost with the dynamic theory of mixing wax and water which is not believably explained. (I'd love to hear from anyone who could really explain this.) Other than that I can totally recommend this book to you.