Boyd reaches melting point (An Ice-cream War - William Boyd)

Member Name: NeilG1

Product:	An Ice-cream War - William Boyd
Date:	24/09/05 (189 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A Witty, Impressive novel

Disadvantages: None

William Boyd has been a professional writer since 1981. His first novel,
"A Good Man In Africa" was released to great critical acclaim in the summer of
that year, winning numerous awards. His follow-up, "An Ice Cream War" took
this one step further. "An Ice Cream War" was a finalist for the Booker Prize
upon its release in 1983 and was thoroughly deserving of this accolade.
The book centres around the campaign fought in Africa during the First World
War, an area of the conflict usually glossed over by other writers. Boyd's
novel takes in a number of protagonists, variously forwarding the narrative
through the perspectives of Felix Cobb, a young Oxford undergraduate when the
war breaks out. Gabriel Cobb, his brother and an army officer. Temple Smith, an
American living on his farm in East Africa, and Erich Von Bishop, his German
neighbour.

Boyd's novel cleverly uses the disparity between these characters to show the
war from several very different view points. The reader comes out with far
greater clarity over different aspects of this conflict, through seeing it from
both sides. Boyd manages to cleverly intertwine these characters stories for the
climax of the novel without stretching the reader's credibility too much, even
through great coincidences in the story. This is a credit to Boyd's ability as
an author. Where a lesser writer would have trouble peicing together the
seperate strands of this complex novel, Boyd effortlessly puts them together as
a fullbodied, coherent whole complementing each other perfectly. It was once
claimed during the French New Wave that all fiction could be defined by "Love,
Sex, Betrayal and Death". "An Ice Cream War" contains a healthy dollop of all
of these and it only adds to the novel's power.

WIlliam Boyd manages to piece together an accurate and compelling insight into
an overlooked area of the First World War and his novel stands as a testament to
all tose who died in this campaign. As Boyd quotes from a British Officer
serving in Africa at the time, they would "all melt like ice creams in the
sun"...

Summary: This is an excellent novel which delivers a great story as well as brilliant writing