The language and characters in author Moira Crone's latest book burn with an intensity that won't soon be forgotten.
Set in the 1960s South before the civil rights movement and written in prose as stark as it is seductive, "The Ice Garden" is a story about how love can blind and mental illness can cripple. It's the story, told in the first person, of 10-year-old Claire, who adores her new baby sister, Sweetie, and quickly realizes her mother, who "had no smile for any of us," doesn't feel the same.
The novel, Crone told North Carolina Public Radio, was her "contribution to the genre of dangerous childhoods" and, in part, modeled after her own growing up in North Carolina at roughly the same time as Claire. People then were trapped in many situations, Crone said, and so are her characters, which she brings to palpable life.
It's Claire's job to help housekeeper Sidney care for Sweetie. However, when Sidney's own family needs her, Claire is on her own, as passion and denial blur Claire's father's ability to see his wife's worsening mental illness or its impact on their daughters.
Poignant, haunting misery — and hope! — run throughout this spellbinding novel, which at times is monstrous, but never maudlin, as it shows how mental illness can so insidiously affect a family. Crone attacks the subject with compelling authority, perhaps at least in part because "The Ice Garden" is not the first time she has tackled it. Her second novel, "A Period of Confinement" published in 1987, is a smaller but equally affecting novel about a woman who abandons her baby and husband in a depressed, confused postpartum haze.
Abandonment occurs in "The Ice Garden" as well, but it's the more subtle and, arguably, the more dangerous kind, as it reminds that a mother's physical presence is in no way a guarantee of her child's well-being.
A writer of both short stories and novels, Crone has created in "The Ice Garden" a deeply affective story that is not always comfortable but is always compelling. It's lyrical, disturbing and completely absorbing.
The more Claire's mother and father struggle and fall apart, the more heartbreakingly vibrant Claire becomes. Sweetie, Sidney and Claire's steadfast Aunt C. are equally appealing, providing suspense and observations about class, gender and race issues that are as much a part of life today as Crone's fictionalized Fayton County.
