‘The Ice Age’ by Kirsten Reed

Another day, or maybe two, another debut. My quest to devour as many first novels as possible has led me to a quirky little book called The Ice Age, a dreamy road trip tale written by Kirsten Reed, a Seattle-born author and artist now based in Brisbane.

This relatively short novel, a slim 209 pages in reasonably sized text, follows an unnamed eighteen-year-old female on a seemingly aimless trip across the United States, accompanied by the much older and evidently very charismatic Gunther, with whom she has an unexplained but strong connection. There is no mention of parents or siblings or anything of that nature; the young and curious narrator seems to be a free agent, save for her special bond with Gunther.

Reed writes in languid, dreamy prose and in a manner that is almost poetic. Even a graphic sequence in which the protagonist is penetrated vaginally and anally at the same time by a pair of rough-and-ready hicks is told in a seemingly affectless manner. This is something at which Reed excels.

I’m glad that I picked The Ice Age up - it was Florence Welch’s enthusiastic jacket quote that did it for me - as it is a hypnotic and colourfully written tale of an unlikely couple traversing the weird and wonderful American heartlands, but I am unsure as to how I should summarise my overall opinion of the book. There are a lot of questions to be asked: Who is this girl? How and under what kind of circumstances did she meet Gunther? Why does she keep talking about vampires? Though I suspect that these blanks were deliberately left blank, I do often enjoy a little backstory. 

The premise, reminiscent of Lolita mixed with a more lo-fi Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is highly captivating, but the recurrent vampire references are a touch tiresome in light of the entertainment world’s recent obsession with these creatures of the night. But in Reed’s defence, it would appear that The Ice Age was written shortly before vampires chomped their way into the mainstream.

Overall, The Ice Age is a promising debut with a unique narrative voice that is naive and precocious in equal parts. It is charmingly written and though I did not find it to be particularly affecting I do look forward to seeing what Kirsten Reed writes next.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in August 2011.