The Country of Ice Cream Star
First edition, 2014
The Country of Ice Cream Star (2014) is a post-apocalyptic novel set in a North America where a disease called Posies kills everyone before the age of twenty. Ice Cream Star, a fifteen-year-old leader of the nomadic Sengle tribe, sets out across a fractured, adultless landscape in search of a cure for her dying brother. The novel is narrated entirely in an invented future dialect evolved from African American vernacular, a formal choice that draws frequent comparison to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. First published in the UK by Chatto and Windus.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, boards. Issued without a dust jacket. London: Chatto & Windus, 2014. ISBN: 9780701186425. #11285.
Fine.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, boards. Issued without a dust jacket. London: Chatto & Windus, 2014. ISBN: 9780701186425. #11285.
Fine.
Additional Details
The Country of Ice Cream Star is set in a post-apocalyptic North America where a disease called Posies kills everyone before the age of twenty. The United States has dissolved into tribal territories, its infrastructure crumbling, its cities reverting to wilderness, its children inheriting a world they have no adults to explain. Ice Cream Star is fifteen, leader of the nomadic Sengle tribe, and when her brother contracts Posies she sets out across this fractured landscape in search of a cure.
The novel's most immediately striking quality is its language. Newman writes entirely in a future English dialect evolved from African American vernacular, inventing a consistent grammar, vocabulary, and cadence that the reader must learn to read as the novel progresses. The comparison to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker is apt and has been widely made, but Newman's invention is distinctly her own. The language is not merely atmospheric, it shapes the reader's experience of Ice Cream Star's consciousness and forces an intimacy with her perspective that standard narration could not achieve.
At over 600 pages, the novel is ambitious to the point of being demanding, and it received strong critical attention in the UK, where it was first published by Chatto and Windus, though it found a smaller audience in the US. It remains one of the more ambitious dystopian novels of the past decade.
The novel's most immediately striking quality is its language. Newman writes entirely in a future English dialect evolved from African American vernacular, inventing a consistent grammar, vocabulary, and cadence that the reader must learn to read as the novel progresses. The comparison to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker is apt and has been widely made, but Newman's invention is distinctly her own. The language is not merely atmospheric, it shapes the reader's experience of Ice Cream Star's consciousness and forces an intimacy with her perspective that standard narration could not achieve.
At over 600 pages, the novel is ambitious to the point of being demanding, and it received strong critical attention in the UK, where it was first published by Chatto and Windus, though it found a smaller audience in the US. It remains one of the more ambitious dystopian novels of the past decade.
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