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    The Country of Ice Cream Star
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    The Country of Ice Cream Star
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    The Country of Ice Cream Star
    Ebook743 pages12 hours

    The Country of Ice Cream Star

    By Sandra Newman

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In the aftermath of a devastating plague, a fearless young heroine embarks on a dangerous and surprising journey to save her world in this brilliantly inventive dystopian thriller, told in bold and fierce language, from a remarkable literary talent.

    My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star and this be the tale of how I bring the cure to all the Nighted States . . .

    In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her nomadic tribe live off of the detritus of a crumbled civilization. Theirs is a world of children; before reaching the age of twenty, they all die of a mysterious disease they call Posies—a plague that has killed for generations. There is no medicine, no treatment; only the mysterious rumor of a cure.

    When her brother begins showing signs of the disease, Ice Cream Star sets off on a bold journey to find this cure. Led by a stranger, a captured prisoner named Pasha who becomes her devoted protector and friend, Ice Cream Star plunges into the unknown, risking her freedom and ultimately her life. Traveling hundreds of miles across treacherous, unfamiliar territory, she will experience love, heartbreak, cruelty, terror, and betrayal, fighting with her whole heart and soul to protect the only world she has ever known.

    Guardian First Book Award finalist Sandra Newman delivers an extraordinary post-apocalyptic literary epic as imaginative as The Passage and as linguistically ambitious as Cloud Atlas. Like Hushpuppy in The Beasts of the Southern Wild grown to adolescence in a landscape as dangerously unpredictable as that of Ready Player One, The Country of Ice Cream Star is a breathtaking work from a writer of rare and unconventional talent.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 10, 2015
    ISBN9780062227126
    Unavailable
    The Country of Ice Cream Star
    Author

    Sandra Newman

    Sandra Newman is the author of the novels The Men, The Heavens (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and The Country of Ice Cream Star, longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and NPR, as well as several other works of fiction and nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s and Granta, among other publications. She lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for The Country of Ice Cream Star

    4/5

    28 ratings14 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I am in love. This book is joining my list of infinitely re-readable books.
    • 3/5
      boy I dont know what to rate this, i just glimpsed through some pages and instantly winced at the writing. it hurts to read, really.
    • 3/5
      Full disclosure, I gave up on this one about one-third of the way through. The only thing special about it was the language -- which was well-thought-out and consistent, a feat in itself -- but I got tired of that. This isn't a book that needs to be 600 pages long, I don't think; I would have been more impressed at a shorter length.
    • 3/5
      First, a consumer warning. This fairly long novel is the first of a series; it ends at a moment of peril and loss without real conclusion. That the story is unfinished in the current volume, and will be continued in later books, is nowhere indicated in the title or other packaging - at least, not in the ARC I have. When tackling a 576 page book, one wants to know whether or not it is complete. This deception occurs too often in modern publishing, and it needs to stop.This is an apocalypse story. Decades ago, an AIDS-like endemic disease, "posies," killed off most people in the US and, evidently, the planet. As the story begins, the world known to our 15 year old heroine, Ice Cream Star, is sparsely inhabited by people who live to age 18 or 19 or 20 at most, before contracting this lingering, fatal illness. In eastern Massachusetts, Ice Cream and her family loot houses for whatever goods still remain. They capture a stranger, a man who holds the key to a possible cure for this plague. But the stranger also heralds a military attack. Ice Cream and her allies - and enemies - will have to migrate out of Massachusetts, to engage with the wider world and the powers that contest what used to be the eastern USA.So far, a standard apocalyptic scenario. What makes this story unusual is a racial disparity in the deadliness of posies. White people are much more susceptible, and are nearly extinct in North America. Every American we meet in the book is African-American or Hispanic. The only characters we'd call white are the stranger, Pasha, and his people - who are Russian, and the front line of an invasion. Protected by the cure, Pasha is the oldest person Ice Cream has ever seen - a thirty-something with wrinkles in his skin. As he becomes useful, and a sort of ally, Ice Cream must consider whether she can trust him. She must deal with succession issues; her brother, the clan's leader, has come down with his posies. She must also deal with neighboring clans. She needs them as allies against the Russians, but some of them are more used to fighting her people than cooperating.The book is written in the heroine's first-person voice. Newman writes Ice Cream's speech in an African-American dialect extrapolated from modern usage. The story begins:My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star. My brother be Driver Eighteen Star, and my ghost brother Mo-Jacques Five Star, dead when I myself was only six years old. Still my heart is rain for him, my brother dead of posies little.My mother and my grands and my great-grands been Sengle pure. Our people be a tarry night sort, and we skinny and long. My brother Driver climb a tree with only hands, because our bones so light, our muscles fortey strong. We flee like a dragonfly over water, we fight like ten guns, and we be bell to see. Other children go deranged and unpredictable for our love.This language contributes to the sense of estrangement one often wants in science fiction, and it's good to have a rare story where the characters cannot default to white in the reader's imagination. However, it's perhaps a dangerous choice for an author who is, from her photo, apparently white. For me, the language works; we need diversity in SF stories, and not just those written by people of color.Among Ice Cream's perils are a choice between two men, respectively fitting bad-boy and nice-boy stereotypes. I have the impresssion that this sort of choice is common in YA books. I wonder whether this story may be aimed at late teens and twenty-somethings who have graduated from YA and are looking for something familiar-seeming, but with more sex. Religious readers may be bothered by the ugly offshoot of Catholicism practiced in New York City in Ice Cream's era.I liked the book. It's well-written; its 576 pages are filled very well with event and introspection. Nothing is padded; Newman simply is telling a long story, one that holds the reader's attention. Also, I liked that the first chapter is set in the town of Westford, Massachusetts, where my wife and I lived for 14 years. But you won't find an end to the story in this first volume.2-12 stars
    • 5/5
      When I first started listening to this audio book I couldn't figure out what I had gotten myself into. I both love and hate books like that, because if done wrong, it can become very confusing. This time it was all done right and I fell in love. My only problem was that I couldn't listen to it in one sitting, and I had to keep borrowing it from the library whenever it became available. It is easy to see why the waiting list was always so long. The whole thing felt so real and I became wrapped up in this new world that had been created.In this future, dystopian America, children live until they turn 20 and then die from an illness. Everyone gets it, there is no avoiding it. Watching this world of children unfold around me was simply incredible and following Ice Cream on her journey was something I thoroughly enjoyed. The characters and the world they lived in were so uniquely written and the audio version of the book brought everything to life in a way that leaves me hearing the voice of Lisa Reneé Pitts whenever I read a passage from the pages. It's that memorable. I am going to make certain I have this audiobook with me the next time I go on a long trip, so I can listen without disturbance from beginning to end.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A post-apocalyptic novel, set in a future America where nobody lives past the age of twenty-one and most die at nineteen of an incurable, inevitable disease known as "posies." It centers on a tough, smart fifteen-year-old girl named Ice Cream Star, who hears of a possible cure for the disease and desperately wants to find it in time to save her brother. From there, the story gets bigger and bigger, spiraling out into a full-scale war.Probably the most notable feature of the novel is the dialect it's written in: an invented future version of English that appears to have grown out of modern African-American dialect, influenced, interestingly, by French. I'm not sure how linguistically plausible its details are, but it captures the feel of a familiar language altered by time and changed circumstances very well, and Newman pulls off an impressive balancing act in creating that feeling while still writing in a way that's perfectly readable and emotionally affecting. If anything, I think the way the strangeness of the dialect forced me to read more slowly and pay more attention to every sentence may have helped it be more affecting.And I did find it affecting. The main character feels very real, the details of the world are imaginative and interesting, and the story, even as it rambled off in directions I wasn't expecting, kept me interested the whole way through. It's a very dark story, full of violence and war and tragedy and all kinds of awfulness that just get even more awful when you stop to think how very young the characters are. But there's a note of hope and strength in it that worked for me, too.It's not a flawless book, by any means. It does ramble a bit, after all. Characters who seem as if they're going to be central to the narrative fall off onto the periphery in some slightly odd ways. And there are a lot of world-building details that, intellectually, I don't think are very believable. But it doesn't matter. It managed to hit the spot for me, anyway, in a deeply satisfying way. I think this is exactly the kind of nuanced, well-written, immersive post-apocalypse story that I wanted from The Passage, but didn't get.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I am invariably drawn to post-apocalyptic fiction, fascinated with an author's imagining of what life may be if the world as we know it ends. Sandra Newman's depiction of a ruined world is brilliant in her novel, The Country of Ice Cream Star. Ice Cream Star lives with the rest of the Sengles in the woods, scratching out a living by hunting or scavenging in 'evac' houses. Life is hard - and short. By the time a person reaches eighteen, the 'posies' set in - and death is inevitable. When a white man is flushed from an evac house, he brings the possibility of a cure, for he is old - at least thirty years. Ice is determined to find the cure to save her brother Driver, who has just turned eighteen, as well as the rest of her people. This was such an amazing book on so many levels. Newman's plotting is rich and wide and so very, very inventive. The story is told in first person narrative from Ice Cream Star's viewpoint. I was completely captured by her voice, her attitude, her fears, her strengths and so much more. I think readers will either choose to stay up late or put the book down after the first few chapters of The Country of Ice Cream Star. Newman's prose are amazingly original - it's language you will recognize, but words have changed and evolved over the course of the intervening years since the collapse of our time. From the back cover blurb: "My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star. This be the tale of how I bring the cures to all the Nighted States, save every poory children, short for life. Is how a city die for selfish love, and rise from this same smallness. Be how the new America being, in wars against all hope - a county with no power in a world that hate its life. So been the faith I sworn, and it ain't evils in no world nor cruelties in no read hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Star." I enjoyed discovering the meanings of 'new' words and finding the remnants of the old tucked among them. I was able to imagine the words spoken aloud, the cadence and the rhythm and patterns of the Sengle patois. The Country of Ice Cream Star would not be the same book told in everyday English. That being said, I can see it frustrating some readers - mores the pity. Factions of all sorts have sprung up in this new world and remembered faiths, traditions, societies and their mores have been bastardized. Newman's descriptions, dialogues and settings were so very vivid. And again, I loved finding the remnants of the past hidden in the rubble of this world. The action and tension is palpable as Ice races to find a cure before her brother succumbs. Newman also deftly explores Ice Cream Star's sexuality. I found myself drawn into the hunt for the cure, only climbing out when forced to. (Darn job gets in the way of serious reading time!) The Country of Ice Cream Star is an epic read with a unique hero, a brilliant plot, oodles of adventure and ingenious world building. I loved it. Who else did? Another of my favourite authors, Kate Atkinson, has a one word blurb on the front cover..."Astonishing.." Yep, that sums it up in one word.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      This book has me perplexed. Usually I have no trouble reading books with particular dialects or cultural slang. I know that if I stick with it long enough, it'll become more natural and read more fluidly. However, the language in this book was so dense and un-English that after reading over 250 pages, I still had to pause at the end of each chapter to see if I really knew what had happened.

      The story itself was compelling enough... I was curious how the story would resolve... would Ice Cream Star prove successful and save her brother, Driver, from Posies (a disease that kills everyone by the age of 20)? The various communities of teenagers are interesting to see how each one evolves differently. I read to the point where Ice Cream arrives in NYC and the Catholic community with the cult of Mary tries to make her into a new "Maria" with disciples. (Un)Fortunately, my library book was due and couldn't be renewed, so I, with some relief, returned it. While the dystopian story is interesting, reading it feels more like a chore in parsing the language. I'm not sure it's worth checking out again.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Without going into it too much, this book is long. I mean its only 640 pages long but it felt like forever.Most reviewers mention the language in the book which I found quite annoying to begin with, however eventually I got used to it and read it that way, with easy understanding of what the words meant. It was enough to get into, the story itself is quite fascinating and I was rooting for Ice Cream star hoping that she would get the cure for her Sengles. But... I felt that it just went on and on forever. I felt that It could have been shorter and neatly wrapped up with 440 pages.And the ending, it kind of just ended, I was looking at the rest of the book thinking, how is this gonna be wrapped up in these few pages?! Maybe there'll be a sequel who knows? And on that note, I'm glad I finished it. I was willing it to end and I don't want to write anymore about it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      The outstanding aspect of this book is that it is written in a language created by the author to portray a dystopian future. It's an English-based pidgin of sorts, and I've never seen this done as well (except, perhaps, in Anthony Burgess's "Clockwork Orange" and, in the cinema script of the Road Warrior movies). Although I always hope this type of speculative fiction will be of the more visionary strain—offering hopeful solutions to problems of the present; the problems that lead to the dystopia—I enjoyed puzzling out the future depicted here, as I picked my way through the familiar but hybrid language.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Be bone audacious but be mally unsatisfies in parts. Ya post book Internet done tell me ain't end of story for my Ice Cream Star. There likely be another book to fix how this one end just stop. And Ice Cream Star, she be a classic character paradigm: the Heroic Epic leading child. Is why she be too good to be the truth: how smart she be, how beauty, how all other children love her and how all men they crave her touch. I think this mally sort of character. I no really want to read bout no girl larger-than-life-unreal. I did though. Might read next book too if it appear.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Reviews! Loved reading them because you told me how some of the words were spelled. Before this was clueless ~ that's because I listened to the book. Didn't have to struggle with the language really, just let it flow over and around me in the car until I was using it outside of the car as well. Cannot believe there will be a sequel. Why do authors do that? As another reviewer says, the author thanked the editor for taking the book shorter - down from 900 pages. Maybe the sequel was in some of those pages removed? I don't know. Knowing there's a sequel definitely changes what I expect from a book, and how I feel about it when it is over. As I didn't know about the sequel when this one finished it's last track, I'll admit the ending just left me feeling sad. Despair. But now, just like ICS, I think there may be hope out there somewhere. (After all, it's fiction and the author can make just about anything happen.)

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Yes, this is a dystopian book. However, whether you love dystopia or are extremely over it, you need to read this book. What makes this such a stand-out novel is the language. It is a patois of english and latin-based roots mixed with the natural changes that happen when language evolves in a primarily closed system. The language is a character in and of itself but the actual characters are pretty stand-out as well. Ice Cream is a strong, clever, determined woman who is soon to be the next leader of her people and the folks who are around her (with names like Radio, Keepers, etc.) also have their own strengths. What a smart book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Sandra Newman’s dystopic novel is standard fare for the genre with a fast moving plot set in a post-apocalyptic world where war and violence are necessary for survival. What makes this novel unique is its use of language. Words and syntax are unusual and Newman offers nothing in the way of translation. At the outset, this may be off-putting for many readers and certainly slows down the reading process. However, much of this narrative is quite lyrical and often easily interpreted based on context. One is often reminded of what it is like to read Shakespeare: although the writing can be beautiful, the use of archaic works and phrases can present with challenges until the reader becomes comfortable with them. This certainly was the case with The Country of Ice Cream Star. Newman’s teenage protagonist (Ice Cream Star) has many captivating qualities. Despite displaying the naivety and hopefulness common in many teens, Ice also shows enough persistence, strength of character and resourcefulness to make her an endearing storyteller. Newman manages her themes deftly with considerable irony. Racism is prominent, but she turns it on its head by making the heroes racial minorities, while the evil antagonists are all White. Religion is shown as just so much magical thinking clinging to old ideas with little understanding of their origins or meanings. Of course nuclear holocaust looms as a potential threat but seems distant since most people no longer have access to the technology. Disease is a much more threatening possibility with the original inhabitants of Earth dying from some ill defined sleeping sickness (Newman calls the “sleepers”) and premature death from AIDS looming as one of the main challenges being faced by these characters. They die young from something called “posies” whose symptoms are reminiscent of the late stages of AIDS (the name for the disease seems to be derived from the lesions associated with Kaposi’s Sarcoma). The Russians have a cure, and Ice seeks it in order to save her brother from imminent death.The setting is standard for the genre. Both the environment and infrastructure have been significantly degraded but coexist. The former seems to be on the mend and inevitably will consume the latter.Politics is likewise degraded. With the exceptions of the Russians (Roos) and possibly the Europeans, most world powers no longer exist. Instead small clans of children still wage wars, but these tend to be childlike games with little threat of death or annihilation. The chief exception is the Russians who have maintained much of the ability to wage conventional wars and for some ill defined reason are hell-bent upon taking over Washington DC, which is defended by a much degraded Marine Corp. The search for a posies cure and the Roo assault on Washington DC make for a fast paced and intriguing read, with some interesting sidelines into crazy religious fundamentalism and the sexual coming age of Ice.