The Year of Ice by Brian Malloy It's 1978, two years after Kevin's mother's car hit an ice patch and sent her into the Missippi river. Kevin's a high school senior, living with his Dad, bagging groceries after school, and crushing desperately on Jom Thompson. At a party, a very drunk Kevin manages to feel up an equally drunk Jon. Following that, he asks Jon out to a movie. The semi-date(one half is on a date, one half isn't) is a disaster; Jon spends the whole time commenting on women. That doesn't really change Kevin's life; he'd already known that the likelihood of Jon liking boys was low. What does change Kevin's life is an outburst from his Aunt Nora, in which she says that his mother went into the Mississippi on purpose, because Kevin's dad was cheating on her. That opens a whole can of worms, and Kevin has to scramble to cope.
Kevin is not a very deep character, but his life is of real life worms, and the people in his life run a full spectrum. This is a narrative from Kevin, from January until December 1978. The drugs and alcohol used in this book bother me on a comfort level, but don't really have mcuh to do with the story.
Happy reading.
