The Year of Ice: A Novel [Paperback]

Brian Malloy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

It is 1978 in the Twin Cities, and Kevin Doyle, a high school senior, is a marginal student in love with keggers, rock and roll, and-unbeknownst to anyone else-a boy in his class with thick eyelashes and a bad attitude. His mother Eileen died two years earlier when her car plunged into the icy waters of the Mississippi River, and since then Kevin's relationship with his father Patrick has become increasingly distant. As lonely women vie for his father's attention, Kevin discovers Patrick's own closely guarded secret: he had planned to abandon his family for another woman. More disturbingly, his mother's death may well have been a suicide, not an accident.

Complicating the family dynamic is the constant meddling of Kevin's outspoken Aunt Nora-who will never forgive Patrick for Eileen's death-along with Patrick's inability to stay single for very long. His loyalties divided between his father and his aunt, between his internal reality and his public persona, Kevin is forced to reevaluate his notions of family and love as painful truths emerge about both.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A gay high school senior struggles to cope with his father's irresponsibility in Malloy's poignant, quietly effective debut, set in Minneapolis in the late '70s. From the outside looking in, protagonist Kevin Doyle seems like a normal, party-happy 17-year-old, but the combination of a troubled family life and his secret crush on one of his best friends definitely sets him apart from the pack. The family issues revolve around his dad, Pat, an ordinary 40-something widower with plenty of romantic prospects as the book opens. But Kevin is furious when he learns that Pat's infidelity may have contributed to the car accident that took his mother's life, and his anger increases exponentially when his father impregnates the woman he had the affair with, then marries her after a brief dalliance with another woman. Malloy's coming-of-age narrative can be generic, but he handles the gay angle nicely as he explores Kevin's difficulty in finding an outlet for his hormonal urges even as he struggles to maintain a relationship with a classmate named Allison Minczeski, who falls for him. The author also displays a razor-sharp comic touch in the verbal sparring between father and son as Pat tries to bring his instant family together, and he balances the comedy with some touching scenes after Pat messes up his latest domestic venture. Malloy shows plenty of talent in his gay spin on the genre, and this debut bodes well for his literary future.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The year 1978, when he graduates from high school and goes off to college, is not Kevin Doyle's best. Not only is he head-over-heels in love with classmate Jon Thompson, who is oblivious to Kevin's interest (and would be horrified if he even suspected the attraction), but Kevin learns that the accident that killed his mother two years before was most likely an act of suicide. (When she learned that her husband was planning to run off with his married lover, she drove off the road into a river and drowned.) Kevin's knowledge leads him to a showdown with his father, who continues to reveal himself as not just an inadequate father and cheating husband but a pretty rotten person. Malloy's first novel is heartfelt but ultimately unsuccessful-Kevin never quite makes the leap to three dimensions, and in many respects he seems to be a cartoon version of a real boy (sentences like "I love him so much I could puke my guts out all over the floor" don't help). Malloy can't quite decide if this is a story about coming to terms with one's sexual orientation or one about working through a troubled father/son relationship, and consequently neither works particularly well. Recommended only for comprehensive fiction collections.
Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312313691
• ISBN-13: 978-0312313692
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #265,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This one sneaks up on you!, July 29, 2002

By 

Christopher Forbes "weirdears" (Brooklyn,, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Year of Ice: A Novel (Hardcover)

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say at the outset that I can't be totally objective about this book. Brian Malloy is one of my oldest friends (we met in a group for people newly out of the closet). I've watched him write several books before this "first" novel came out. So I sat down with this book well disposed and I wasn't disappointed.

Malloy has written a fresh book that really sneaks up on you. The main character is someone unusual in gay fiction. His is not a classically smart, bookish outsider. Rather, he is a high school insider, cool, good looking, a jock. And yet, his story rings more true because of that. You feel Kevin Doyle's deep sense of alienation from himself and consequently, from everyone around him. His tone rings true...by turns smart aleck, moody, angry, sensitive, and finally vulnerable.

The best thing about the novel is that the gay angle is only one part, and not the most important part of the story. Mostly, this book is about the unraveling of secrets. Kevin has his own secret, but so does his bumbling father, his dead mother, his strong Irish Catholic aunt, even his friends. And as the secrets unravel the novel takes a surprising turn into grey territory. And the book ends paradoxically unresolved and yet satisfying. It mirrors life well...though by the end of the book you hope that Malloy is planning a sequel. You want to know more about these fascinating characters.

All in all, this is a wonderful debut, even if I'm biased. Readers of gay themed fiction should appreciate this book, but I also believe that it should find a wider general audience. The truths about adolesence and family found in this book are universal.

Thanks Brian, it was a great ride!

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Attn: Book Discussion Groups, March 28, 2003

By 

Lauren Baratz-Logsted (Danbury, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Year of Ice: A Novel (Hardcover)

Brian Malloy's sensitive debut novel provides enough jumping-off topics to keep any book club talking well into the night...a high school senior named Kevin out in Minnesota, it provides generous food for thought on all of the following: dealing with the death of a loved one amid comflicted feelings about the person; the difficulty of parents and children to ever really see one another for who they are; the loneliness experienced by the most individual of individuals trying to fit into the society at large. Not just a serious novel, however, there's more at work here: like wry humor, a strong protagonist whose survival-against-the-odds beyond the end of the novel is a comfort to imagine; and the fact that that protagonist is allowed to be achingly human to the point where he's borderline annoying, not in a truly annoying-annoying way, but in a nostalgic-annoying way that will make older readers fondly remember, "God, I remember when I was young and the whole world moved all around me."...

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Thing, July 29, 2002

By 

Gretchen Laskas "Author" (Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Year of Ice: A Novel (Hardcover)

So many books are typed as "coming of age" or "coming out" but neither of those terms does full justice to the voice and character that is 18 year old Kevin Doyle. You can almost hear him speaking the story to you as you read, and his wit, empathy and hope come through on every page. A book that is filled with the ache of what it means to be young in a world you do not understand, where you do not often know how you should take part -- Brian Malloy has created a story anyone who was once 18 knows all too well.

An excellent use of setting, an array of well-drawn secondary characters, realistic dialogue -- these are the marks of a writer who will be with us for many years to come.