Friends of The
Marion County Public Library
Marion County Public Library
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Friends Book Club Pick For September
Icy Sparks by: Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Pick up your book copy at the library in
early August. Meeting to be held:
September 16th 6:45 p.m.
Marion County Public Library
Large Meeting Room
Amazon.com Reviews
The eponymous heroine of Gwyn Rubio's Icy
Sparks is only 10 years old the first time it
happens. The sudden itching, the pressure
squeezing her skull, and the "little invisible
rubber bands" attached to her eyelids are all
symptoms of Tourette's syndrome. At this point,
of course, Icy doesn't yet have a name for these
unsettling impulses. But whenever they become
too much to resist, she runs down to her
grandparents' root cellar, and there she gives in,
croaking, jerking, cursing, and popping her eyes.
Nicknamed the "frog child" by her classmates, Icy
soon becomes "a little girl who had to keep all of
her compulsions inside." Only a brief confinement
at the Bluegrass State Hospital persuades her
that there are actually children more "different"
than she.
As a first novel about growing up poor, orphaned,
and prone to fits in a small Appalachian town, Icy
Sparks tells a fascinating story. By the time the
epilogue rolls around, Icy has prevailed over her
disorder and become a therapist: "Children silent
as stone sing for me. Children who cannot speak
create music for me." For readers familiar with
this particular brand of coming-of-age
novel--affliction fiction?--Icy's triumph should
come as no great surprise. That's one problem.
Another is Rubio's tendency to lapse into
overheated prose: this is a novel in which the
characters would sooner yell, pout, whine, moan,
or sass a sentence than simply say it. But the
real drawback to Icy Sparks is that some of the
characters--especially the bad ones--are drawn
with very broad strokes indeed, and the moral
principles tend to be equally elementary:
embrace your difference, none of us is alone, and
so on. When Icy gets saved at a tent revival,
even Jesus takes on the accents of a self-help
guru: "You must love yourself!" With insights like
these, this is one Southern novel that's more
Wally Lamb than Harper Lee. --Mary Park
Review taken from Amazon.com
Icy Sparks by: Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Pick up your book copy at the library in
early August. Meeting to be held:
September 16th 6:45 p.m.
Marion County Public Library
Large Meeting Room
Amazon.com Reviews
The eponymous heroine of Gwyn Rubio's Icy
Sparks is only 10 years old the first time it
happens. The sudden itching, the pressure
squeezing her skull, and the "little invisible
rubber bands" attached to her eyelids are all
symptoms of Tourette's syndrome. At this point,
of course, Icy doesn't yet have a name for these
unsettling impulses. But whenever they become
too much to resist, she runs down to her
grandparents' root cellar, and there she gives in,
croaking, jerking, cursing, and popping her eyes.
Nicknamed the "frog child" by her classmates, Icy
soon becomes "a little girl who had to keep all of
her compulsions inside." Only a brief confinement
at the Bluegrass State Hospital persuades her
that there are actually children more "different"
than she.
As a first novel about growing up poor, orphaned,
and prone to fits in a small Appalachian town, Icy
Sparks tells a fascinating story. By the time the
epilogue rolls around, Icy has prevailed over her
disorder and become a therapist: "Children silent
as stone sing for me. Children who cannot speak
create music for me." For readers familiar with
this particular brand of coming-of-age
novel--affliction fiction?--Icy's triumph should
come as no great surprise. That's one problem.
Another is Rubio's tendency to lapse into
overheated prose: this is a novel in which the
characters would sooner yell, pout, whine, moan,
or sass a sentence than simply say it. But the
real drawback to Icy Sparks is that some of the
characters--especially the bad ones--are drawn
with very broad strokes indeed, and the moral
principles tend to be equally elementary:
embrace your difference, none of us is alone, and
so on. When Icy gets saved at a tent revival,
even Jesus takes on the accents of a self-help
guru: "You must love yourself!" With insights like
these, this is one Southern novel that's more
Wally Lamb than Harper Lee. --Mary Park
Review taken from Amazon.com
DON'T FORGET!!!! Quarterly Meeting To Be Held June 26th at 4:00 p.m. Marion Co. Public Library Large Meeting Room |