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Simon & Schuster/Scribner (USA) Official publication date: October 2, 2002 ISBN 0-7432-2784-0 Buy a copy now: Amazon.com BN.com Books-a-Million Powell's |
| The Ice Beneath You a novel, by Christian Bauman "Beautifully crafted, structured, and simple...It is a pleasure to read the work of a real writer. Thank you, Mr. Bauman." -Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream "This sterling first novel offers a study in quiet tension and contemporary social malaise...Bauman's style is terse, candid and on target with both language and circumstances. His close analysis of character motivation lends extra tension to an already suspenseful account...A war story for the new millennium." -Publishers Weekly "Impressive...Equal parts Stripes and Apocalypse Now...depicts a hard-as-nails character who's as fragile as peace itself. Like his contradictory Gen-X hero, Bauman served in Somalia, and there's an immediacy here that evokes the great soldier-writers Tim O'Brien and Thom Jones; but while those titans tell of Vietnam's endless aftermath, Bauman gives us a hidden war story closer to our own time." -Mark Rozzo, The Los Angeles Times "Coming home is never easy. When you have a guilty conscience, it's even harder. A fresh, straightforward debut that strikes just the right balance between action and recollection." -Kirkus Reviews "This year's most riveting return flight into the heart of darkness...searingly real." -Anneli Rufus, East Bay Express (Berkeley, CA) "Bauman's pure prose suits his naturalist approach. What is striking...are the tiny minefields laid along the way, microscopic psychological bombs detonated by the realization that the war is never really over for anyone who has fought it. With unadorned honesty, Bauman has illuminated us." -Elisa Ludwig, Philadelphia City Paper "An addictive, quick read....Unforgettable characters....Original, timely, and important." -Home News Tribune (E. Brunswick, NJ) "The Ice Beneath You is a feat of amazing storytelling." -The Rake magazine (Minneapolis/St. Paul) "If a book can have a temperature, this one is hot, balmy, tense like a humid summer afternoon... [Bauman] creates a momentum that's almost hypnotic. Easily one of my two or three favorite books of the year." -Tony Buchsbaum, JanuaryMagazine.com "Darkly comic....Bauman's intercutting is a nervy stylistic that zeroes in on the drab lives of less-than historical figures....[A] late-night tavern tale of a likeable anti-hero and his dubious comrades in arms." -Eugene Weekly (Eugene, OR) "From the second I pulled The Ice Beneath You out of my mailbox, I had a hard time putting it down. I stayed up hours past my bedtime, blocking out the sound of a building alarm going off across the street all evening long, wrapped up in the narrative and reading occasional passages to my husband. I read the book on my walk to school in the morning, in snatches between meetings, and in every spare second I had until I finished it." -Jen Crispin, Bookslut.com "An impressive debut....As with all great war novels, The Ice Beneath You is not so much about war itself as the consequences of war." -The Tallahassee Democrat "It's very rare that a writer's first novel can come out of the blue and have the impact of The Ice Beneath You. This first novel is so good it's either daunting that the bar has been set so high for aspiring writers or inspiring that such lofty heights can be reached. The Ice Beneath You is amazing fiction, both gripping the reader and pulling the best from its author." -Soundings "A remarkable debut...a tense, razor-edged, powerful effort...This is a book that will hold you." |
 Fresh Air with Terry Gross NPR, January 2003 (audio link, aprox. 40 min.) Radio Times, Marty Moss-Coane WHYY fm, October 2002 (audio link, 1 hr.)  |
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