Will Sargent reviewed The empire of ice cream by Jeffrey Ford
Review of 'The empire of ice cream' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
Well, I finished it. This book sat on my shelf for more than a year before I picked it up and started reading. It's a book of short stories, mostly fantasy based.
Most of the stories are sad ones. They're about men who sail in a harbor that a child drowned in. A woman who goes from being kept in a cage by a giant until she's fat enough to eat, only to escape to a marriage in the suburbs with a husband and two children that seems even more surreal than the giant did. Two men, tired of their failures, who take a drug that only shows them how clearly they have lost. The recovered diary of a small fairy that lives in a sandcastle, living so fast that it dies 80 years later over the course of a single day. These stories are poignant, never overly sentimental or …
Well, I finished it. This book sat on my shelf for more than a year before I picked it up and started reading. It's a book of short stories, mostly fantasy based.
Most of the stories are sad ones. They're about men who sail in a harbor that a child drowned in. A woman who goes from being kept in a cage by a giant until she's fat enough to eat, only to escape to a marriage in the suburbs with a husband and two children that seems even more surreal than the giant did. Two men, tired of their failures, who take a drug that only shows them how clearly they have lost. The recovered diary of a small fairy that lives in a sandcastle, living so fast that it dies 80 years later over the course of a single day. These stories are poignant, never overly sentimental or precious, with language so well crafted that each sentence rings like a clear bell.
In short, this was one of the most annoying, manipulative reading experiences I've had. Not even having the good grace to be mawkish, instead it aims for your soft and exposed emotional gonads and repeatedly kicks in your sensitive areas while you're still wondering what in God's name you did to deserve this treatment. It's as if someone took The Notebook and Terms of Endearment and then wrapped it in a Saturday Morning Cartoon Show so you're still wide open to the base emotional manipulation this evil fucker is prone to.
You know Twilight Sparkle? Well, I have some bad for you. She has cancer. But she's never looked so beautiful.