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An Ice-Cream War
Set in the years 1914 to 1918, An Ice Cream War follows the fortunes of two English brothers who enlist and fight in German East Africa. Contrasting the vibrant chaos of East Africa with the quiet gentility of Edwardian England, the novel tracks the brothers' very different but equally tragic experiences in the war and the pressures and sorrows of those they leave at home.
384 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1982
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2734 people want to read
About the author
William Boyd
69 books2,475 followersNote: William^^Boyd
Of Scottish descent, Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana on 7th March, 1952 and spent much of his early life there and in Nigeria where his mother was a teacher and his father, a doctor. Boyd was in Nigeria during the Biafran War, the brutal secessionist conflict which ran from 1967 to 1970 and it had a profound effect on him.
At the age of nine years he attended Gordonstoun school, in Moray, Scotland and then Nice University (Diploma of French Studies) and Glasgow University (MA Hons in English and Philosophy), where he edited the Glasgow University Guardian. He then moved to Jesus College, Oxford in 1975 and completed a PhD thesis on Shelley. For a brief period he worked at the New Statesman magazine as a TV critic, then he returned to Oxford as an English lecturer teaching the contemporary novel at St Hilda's College (1980-83). It was while he was here that his first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published.
Boyd spent eight years in academia, during which time his first film, Good and Bad at Games, was made. When he was offered a college lecturership, which would mean spending more time teaching, he was forced to choose between teaching and writing.
Boyd was selected in 1983 as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists' in a promotion run by Granta magazine and the Book Marketing Council. He also became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in the same year, and is also an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has been presented with honorary doctorates in literature from the universities of St. Andrews, Stirling and Glasgow. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005.
Boyd has been with his wife Susan since they met as students at Glasgow University and all his books are dedicated to her. His wife is editor-at-large of Harper's Bazaar magazine, and they currently spend about thirty to forty days a year in the US. He and his wife have a house in Chelsea, West London but spend most of the year at their chateau in Bergerac in south west France, where Boyd produces award-winning wines.
Of Scottish descent, Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana on 7th March, 1952 and spent much of his early life there and in Nigeria where his mother was a teacher and his father, a doctor. Boyd was in Nigeria during the Biafran War, the brutal secessionist conflict which ran from 1967 to 1970 and it had a profound effect on him.
At the age of nine years he attended Gordonstoun school, in Moray, Scotland and then Nice University (Diploma of French Studies) and Glasgow University (MA Hons in English and Philosophy), where he edited the Glasgow University Guardian. He then moved to Jesus College, Oxford in 1975 and completed a PhD thesis on Shelley. For a brief period he worked at the New Statesman magazine as a TV critic, then he returned to Oxford as an English lecturer teaching the contemporary novel at St Hilda's College (1980-83). It was while he was here that his first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published.
Boyd spent eight years in academia, during which time his first film, Good and Bad at Games, was made. When he was offered a college lecturership, which would mean spending more time teaching, he was forced to choose between teaching and writing.
Boyd was selected in 1983 as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists' in a promotion run by Granta magazine and the Book Marketing Council. He also became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in the same year, and is also an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has been presented with honorary doctorates in literature from the universities of St. Andrews, Stirling and Glasgow. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005.
Boyd has been with his wife Susan since they met as students at Glasgow University and all his books are dedicated to her. His wife is editor-at-large of Harper's Bazaar magazine, and they currently spend about thirty to forty days a year in the US. He and his wife have a house in Chelsea, West London but spend most of the year at their chateau in Bergerac in south west France, where Boyd produces award-winning wines.
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January 6, 2018
An African Tragicomedy
Let's face it: a terrible title for a rather good book. The subject is WW1 as fought in Africa between the colonies of British East Africa (roughly Kenya) and German East Africa (roughly Tanzania)—the war that forms the background to C. S. Forester's novel The African Queen and the Bogart/Hepburn movie made from it, but is otherwise not much written about. Compared to the carnage in Flanders, it was a minor front, but far from being the walkover envisioned by a soldier writing home in 1914, quoting his commanding officer: "It is far too hot for sustained fighting," he says; "we will all melt like ice cream in the sun." Such overconfidence led to the first British defeat in the war, when they landed forces from India to capture the port of Tanga. This might have succeeded, has they not thought it more chivalrous to give the town twenty-four hours' warning first. Their return a day later was met by such a combination of accident, miscommunication, and coincidence that it might have been pure comedy, but for the hundreds of soldiers left dead or wounded.
The tragicomedy of the real Battle of Tanga sets the tone for Boyd's entire novel, his second, published in 1982. Giles Foden, whose brief introduction to the 2010 Penguin edition gave me most of the ideas for this review, sees Boyd as pivotal in the development of a particularly British tradition. I have myself noticed a certain style of British writing about war and world events, setting them against the normality of nice upper-middle-class values: domestic social comedy as the matrix for horror. You can see it as early as E. M. Forster's A Passage to India ; you can see it in the The Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh, which is the clear godparent to this book; you can see it in Anthony Powell and J. G. Farrell; and for some reason it has broken out again in the most recent novels by Sebastian Faulks, Simon Mawer, Ian McEwan, Kate Atkinson, and Boyd himself. As with several of the authors mentioned, it made me underestimate the book at first, settling into familiar comfort-food territory. But, as with only the best of them, I found myself revising my opinion upwards by the end.
Boyd, who was born in Africa, knows the country well. Much of the action is set around Mount Kilimanjaro, but the setting is never used merely for picturesque ends. Nor is there any emphasis on the Africans themselves; this is colonial not postcolonial literature. He opens with two settlers, an American sisal farmer called Temple Smith and a half-English German reserve officer called Erich von Bishop; they begin as neighbors but end on different sides. The English anchor for Boyd's story is Stackpole in Kent, the home of the irascible retired Major Cobb and his family. Gabriel Cobb, the elder son, is already a captain in the army; he has been posted in India, but has come home to get married. Felix, his younger brother, half-child, half-adult, and still unsure of himself, is about to go up to Oxford; both will eventually join the fighting in East Africa. Sexual desire, confusion, and guilt play a significant part in the development of each of woefully inexperienced brothers, and even in Africa not all decisions will be guided by the necessities of war alone.
Very much in the manner of Waugh, there are several characters who are pure comedy. My favorite is a Scottish sergeant named Gilzean (pronounced, I suspect, Gullane) who speaks in a nearly incomprehensible dialect: "You'll find we're unco fremt haufins out here." Add to him a preposterous English district officer called Wheech-Browning, and the manic Major Bilderbeck who always seems to have some secret knowledge that makes him valuable to HQ. Yet both these figures have a particular knack for causing death around them. And they are real deaths. The thing that finally sets Boyd apart from Waugh is that fiascoes have serious consequences. Just when you are laughing the loudest, something terrible happens, and not only to minor characters either. And that is war.
Let's face it: a terrible title for a rather good book. The subject is WW1 as fought in Africa between the colonies of British East Africa (roughly Kenya) and German East Africa (roughly Tanzania)—the war that forms the background to C. S. Forester's novel The African Queen and the Bogart/Hepburn movie made from it, but is otherwise not much written about. Compared to the carnage in Flanders, it was a minor front, but far from being the walkover envisioned by a soldier writing home in 1914, quoting his commanding officer: "It is far too hot for sustained fighting," he says; "we will all melt like ice cream in the sun." Such overconfidence led to the first British defeat in the war, when they landed forces from India to capture the port of Tanga. This might have succeeded, has they not thought it more chivalrous to give the town twenty-four hours' warning first. Their return a day later was met by such a combination of accident, miscommunication, and coincidence that it might have been pure comedy, but for the hundreds of soldiers left dead or wounded.
The tragicomedy of the real Battle of Tanga sets the tone for Boyd's entire novel, his second, published in 1982. Giles Foden, whose brief introduction to the 2010 Penguin edition gave me most of the ideas for this review, sees Boyd as pivotal in the development of a particularly British tradition. I have myself noticed a certain style of British writing about war and world events, setting them against the normality of nice upper-middle-class values: domestic social comedy as the matrix for horror. You can see it as early as E. M. Forster's A Passage to India ; you can see it in the The Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh, which is the clear godparent to this book; you can see it in Anthony Powell and J. G. Farrell; and for some reason it has broken out again in the most recent novels by Sebastian Faulks, Simon Mawer, Ian McEwan, Kate Atkinson, and Boyd himself. As with several of the authors mentioned, it made me underestimate the book at first, settling into familiar comfort-food territory. But, as with only the best of them, I found myself revising my opinion upwards by the end.
Boyd, who was born in Africa, knows the country well. Much of the action is set around Mount Kilimanjaro, but the setting is never used merely for picturesque ends. Nor is there any emphasis on the Africans themselves; this is colonial not postcolonial literature. He opens with two settlers, an American sisal farmer called Temple Smith and a half-English German reserve officer called Erich von Bishop; they begin as neighbors but end on different sides. The English anchor for Boyd's story is Stackpole in Kent, the home of the irascible retired Major Cobb and his family. Gabriel Cobb, the elder son, is already a captain in the army; he has been posted in India, but has come home to get married. Felix, his younger brother, half-child, half-adult, and still unsure of himself, is about to go up to Oxford; both will eventually join the fighting in East Africa. Sexual desire, confusion, and guilt play a significant part in the development of each of woefully inexperienced brothers, and even in Africa not all decisions will be guided by the necessities of war alone.
Very much in the manner of Waugh, there are several characters who are pure comedy. My favorite is a Scottish sergeant named Gilzean (pronounced, I suspect, Gullane) who speaks in a nearly incomprehensible dialect: "You'll find we're unco fremt haufins out here." Add to him a preposterous English district officer called Wheech-Browning, and the manic Major Bilderbeck who always seems to have some secret knowledge that makes him valuable to HQ. Yet both these figures have a particular knack for causing death around them. And they are real deaths. The thing that finally sets Boyd apart from Waugh is that fiascoes have serious consequences. Just when you are laughing the loudest, something terrible happens, and not only to minor characters either. And that is war.
December 5, 2015
William Boyd never fails to please.
Can I say that?
Sounds a bit ambiguous.
But this is a site for book readers, no-one will see any kind of innuendo there, surely? On the other hand, I suppose the gr guidelines might kick in, someone might flag it for inappropriate content or something.
Ok, just to be on the safe side:
A William Boyd never fails to please.
No, stupid, this is not another person with an embarrassing given name that he doesn't use, something like Archibald or Algernon. I'd have used a . wouldn't I?
A William Boyd novel never fails to please.
Happy now?
Can I say that?
Sounds a bit ambiguous.
But this is a site for book readers, no-one will see any kind of innuendo there, surely? On the other hand, I suppose the gr guidelines might kick in, someone might flag it for inappropriate content or something.
Ok, just to be on the safe side:
A William Boyd never fails to please.
No, stupid, this is not another person with an embarrassing given name that he doesn't use, something like Archibald or Algernon. I'd have used a . wouldn't I?
A William Boyd novel never fails to please.
Happy now?
April 6, 2018
A study in colonial idiocy that takes place during World War 1. The title itself is barely relevant as it is only mentioned in passing in a prologue, where Africa is said to be too hot for war, and “we will all melt like ice-cream in the sun”.
Several lives intersect here – the families of Temple Smith and Erich von Bishop, English and German homesteaders whose farms are on the border between British and German East Africa, and two brothers, Felix and Gabriel Cobb, belonging to a militaristic family in South-East England. The humour is a bit laboured as befits a novel set in the period, though Boyd is very good at conjuring up the era’s styles, prejudices, inhibitions and conversation.
This is definitely a black comedy, fun to read, but it didn’t really hold my interest. Maybe Boyd is a bit of an acquired taste.
Several lives intersect here – the families of Temple Smith and Erich von Bishop, English and German homesteaders whose farms are on the border between British and German East Africa, and two brothers, Felix and Gabriel Cobb, belonging to a militaristic family in South-East England. The humour is a bit laboured as befits a novel set in the period, though Boyd is very good at conjuring up the era’s styles, prejudices, inhibitions and conversation.
This is definitely a black comedy, fun to read, but it didn’t really hold my interest. Maybe Boyd is a bit of an acquired taste.
October 28, 2014
What a strange book this is. I picked it up because after Lila I thought it'd be nice to read something 'light,' a comedy in this case, about a bunch of half-mad Englishmen in East Africa during the First World War. That's how ignorant I can get. It is 'light' in the same way that say, The Beatles' Blue Album is light - that it's certainly no didactic, that it's lively and frisky and that action and response, not vague morality, means everything. And it's so well made, so well executed, continuously inventive, and self-assured that you probably won't be able to treat it 'lightly.'
It's a very funny book, refreshingly politically incorrect, about a small bunch of flawed people, the good and the mad, English and German, but it's also a very serious book dealing with themes not only of war but of family and love too, self-preseverance and the relentless sense of loss. It's also quite brutal, or at least very violent occasionally. It's great fun, a very memorable ride with unforgettable characters and highly recommended.
It's a very funny book, refreshingly politically incorrect, about a small bunch of flawed people, the good and the mad, English and German, but it's also a very serious book dealing with themes not only of war but of family and love too, self-preseverance and the relentless sense of loss. It's also quite brutal, or at least very violent occasionally. It's great fun, a very memorable ride with unforgettable characters and highly recommended.
August 19, 2020
An engaging, interesting, sometimes humorous, sad, tragic, memorable, enjoyable historical fiction novel about British and German characters and an American who find themselves in East Africa in the period 1914 to 1918. The fairly ordinary people are well developed and lots happen. For example there is a love triangle, a coming of age story, some comic moments showing how relaxed and gentlemanly the war in East Africa started, soldiers being shot at by their own side, soldiers initially mistaking bees for bullets, a peeping tom and the trials of learning how to fire a Stoke gun.
The author’s second novel, ‘An Ice-cream War’ was shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize.
The author’s second novel, ‘An Ice-cream War’ was shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize.
December 19, 2017
The First World War has been explored in fiction on many occasions, but William Boyd's An Ice Cream War focuses on a largely-forgotten front - the battle for East Africa.
Both Germany and Britain had neighbouring colonies there, and the conflict also sucked in territory that at time was ruled by Belgium and Portugal.
This was not the industrialised mass conflict of the European fronts, and the initial skirmishes in Boyd's novel verge on the farcical.
But nevertheless there is danger and death here as Boyd's characters discover.
Much like the European war though there is an air of pointlessness to the battles, and a sense that neither side really knows what they are trying to achieve.
At the centre of the novel are two brothers. We meet them initially in England as war threatens. Gabriel Cobb is already in the military and soon finds himself posted to East Africa. His younger brother Felix is at Oxford, but as the conflict heats up, he eventually signs up to head to Africa on a very personal mission.
Alongside the brothers, we also meet Temple Smith, an American ex-pat running a sisal farm in the British colony. War is an inconvenience to him initially, but after his farm is wrecked by occupying forces, he joins the conflict to pursue revenge.
His target is Erich Von Bishop, half British, but signed up for the German forces, emphasising the close links there actually were between families that could have fought on either side.
Eventually these stories collide as An Ice Cream War reaches its conclusion.
As ever Boyd is a master storyteller, drawing you in, and keeping you engaged from start to finish. There is scope for comedy as well as drama in the farcical nature of the African campaign.
it isn't his strongest work. The Smith and Von Bishop sub-plot perhaps works less well than the Cobb brothers' storyline, and occasionally he struggles with the balance of tone between comedy and drama.
There is no space for any indigenous African characters too, with the focus entirely on the colonisers.
But there is still plenty to enjoy in An Ice Cream War, and it certainly casts a light on a World War One front that has been largely forgotten.
Both Germany and Britain had neighbouring colonies there, and the conflict also sucked in territory that at time was ruled by Belgium and Portugal.
This was not the industrialised mass conflict of the European fronts, and the initial skirmishes in Boyd's novel verge on the farcical.
But nevertheless there is danger and death here as Boyd's characters discover.
Much like the European war though there is an air of pointlessness to the battles, and a sense that neither side really knows what they are trying to achieve.
At the centre of the novel are two brothers. We meet them initially in England as war threatens. Gabriel Cobb is already in the military and soon finds himself posted to East Africa. His younger brother Felix is at Oxford, but as the conflict heats up, he eventually signs up to head to Africa on a very personal mission.
Alongside the brothers, we also meet Temple Smith, an American ex-pat running a sisal farm in the British colony. War is an inconvenience to him initially, but after his farm is wrecked by occupying forces, he joins the conflict to pursue revenge.
His target is Erich Von Bishop, half British, but signed up for the German forces, emphasising the close links there actually were between families that could have fought on either side.
Eventually these stories collide as An Ice Cream War reaches its conclusion.
As ever Boyd is a master storyteller, drawing you in, and keeping you engaged from start to finish. There is scope for comedy as well as drama in the farcical nature of the African campaign.
it isn't his strongest work. The Smith and Von Bishop sub-plot perhaps works less well than the Cobb brothers' storyline, and occasionally he struggles with the balance of tone between comedy and drama.
There is no space for any indigenous African characters too, with the focus entirely on the colonisers.
But there is still plenty to enjoy in An Ice Cream War, and it certainly casts a light on a World War One front that has been largely forgotten.
January 18, 2018
So much for the jazzy title. Like all Boyd's books, this over-promises and under-delivers.
Listen. If you're going to take the haunting phrase "we shall all melt in the heat" from an actual soldier's letter and stamp it on the first page of the book like an omen, at least make the book about heat. About the melting of morals and of wills in the desert. About the viscous boil of the East African theatre in contrast to the sopping icy trenches of the Western Front.
Argh, there was so much potential for this novel to be about place. About ennui and heatstroke and slow-spun metaphors of desert and action and inaction. Boiling rage and absurdity. It wasn't even hot for half the narrative! There was too much English countryside and too much mundane description. East Africa was barely conjured.
I have other gripes, too. Like the describing of characters. OH MY WORD. For the first third of the novel, every time a new character appears, Boyd breaks off for a lengthy, torrid description of their physical appearance. Sheer schoolboy stuff. Appearance should be slipped into the action like a hot-water bottle between the sheets – gently warming the picture without you even realising it. Give away their eye colour with a toss of the shoulders or a blazing argument; convey their build with a verb (I'll give you some for free: 'stumbled', 'slipped', 'heaved'. See? Not so hard). I felt like I was back in GCSE English.
And, of course, sex. I used to think Boyd was doing something interesting by exploring what it means for a character to be driven inexorably by lust. Except that this happens in every flipping novel. The characters aren’t obsessed with sex; Boyd is. Perhaps it's a fault of war writers and thriller hacks to pile it on thick, in a desperate attempt to prove they aren’t dry old military historians (Sebastian Faulks, I'm looking at you). But it's distracting and overdone and painfully self-conscious.
Overall: no ice cream, just brain freeze.
Listen. If you're going to take the haunting phrase "we shall all melt in the heat" from an actual soldier's letter and stamp it on the first page of the book like an omen, at least make the book about heat. About the melting of morals and of wills in the desert. About the viscous boil of the East African theatre in contrast to the sopping icy trenches of the Western Front.
Argh, there was so much potential for this novel to be about place. About ennui and heatstroke and slow-spun metaphors of desert and action and inaction. Boiling rage and absurdity. It wasn't even hot for half the narrative! There was too much English countryside and too much mundane description. East Africa was barely conjured.
I have other gripes, too. Like the describing of characters. OH MY WORD. For the first third of the novel, every time a new character appears, Boyd breaks off for a lengthy, torrid description of their physical appearance. Sheer schoolboy stuff. Appearance should be slipped into the action like a hot-water bottle between the sheets – gently warming the picture without you even realising it. Give away their eye colour with a toss of the shoulders or a blazing argument; convey their build with a verb (I'll give you some for free: 'stumbled', 'slipped', 'heaved'. See? Not so hard). I felt like I was back in GCSE English.
And, of course, sex. I used to think Boyd was doing something interesting by exploring what it means for a character to be driven inexorably by lust. Except that this happens in every flipping novel. The characters aren’t obsessed with sex; Boyd is. Perhaps it's a fault of war writers and thriller hacks to pile it on thick, in a desperate attempt to prove they aren’t dry old military historians (Sebastian Faulks, I'm looking at you). But it's distracting and overdone and painfully self-conscious.
Overall: no ice cream, just brain freeze.
September 13, 2016
My favourite Boyd (among many great books).
I felt the breath of my adversary on the back of my neck as I metaphorically ran for my life.
As a successor to Graham Greene I rate Boyd very highly
I felt the breath of my adversary on the back of my neck as I metaphorically ran for my life.
As a successor to Graham Greene I rate Boyd very highly
July 3, 2015
'Contrasts the fortunes of those languishing at home with those fighting abroad'. Jumping around between 'home' (England) and 'abroad' (East Africa) often with large gaps between where we left off that aspect of the story to re-joining it I'm afraid for me the narrative just didn't flow well.
Despite their obsession with genitals and frank sexual talk I much preferred the 'home' episodes spent with the Cobb family, brothers Felix and Gabriel, and their wonderfully dreadful father, Major Cobb (possibly the only redeeming thing about the novel), and can't help but wonder if the story would have benefited from sticking with one thread of the story or the other whether that be the 'home' or 'abroad' element.
'Funny' according to Harper's. Very much a personal matter, what one person finds humorous another person might not and OK whilst there were times when I recognised that certain events could be interpreted as being funny I personally felt the book woefully lacking in this respect.
Perhaps worst of all though was ...
It was often difficult to pick out the actual plot from all the numerous background details and with such an abundance of viewpoints/various pyschologies the author frequently seemed to lose sight of his characters frequently glossing over 'important' events.
That though set in a war zone there often was no real sense of place, that this was not just any war zone but East Africa.
And that folks is why I didn't enjoy An Ice-Cream War.
Copyright: Tracy Terry @ Pen and Paper.
Despite their obsession with genitals and frank sexual talk I much preferred the 'home' episodes spent with the Cobb family, brothers Felix and Gabriel, and their wonderfully dreadful father, Major Cobb (possibly the only redeeming thing about the novel), and can't help but wonder if the story would have benefited from sticking with one thread of the story or the other whether that be the 'home' or 'abroad' element.
'Funny' according to Harper's. Very much a personal matter, what one person finds humorous another person might not and OK whilst there were times when I recognised that certain events could be interpreted as being funny I personally felt the book woefully lacking in this respect.
Perhaps worst of all though was ...
It was often difficult to pick out the actual plot from all the numerous background details and with such an abundance of viewpoints/various pyschologies the author frequently seemed to lose sight of his characters frequently glossing over 'important' events.
That though set in a war zone there often was no real sense of place, that this was not just any war zone but East Africa.
And that folks is why I didn't enjoy An Ice-Cream War.
Copyright: Tracy Terry @ Pen and Paper.
March 5, 2013
This historical novel set in Tanzania, Kenya and the UK during WW I, is darkly humorous and beautifully detailed. The focus is on a group of people whose own lives and plans are spun into disarray by the war and its consequences. Von Bishop enjoys farming in German East Africa, but his wife, Liesl, longs to return to Germany. Across the border, the American, Walter, cares about little in life by his farm, his sisal decorticator, and his future agricultural plans. In England, the Cobb family drifts in the moral and intellectual haze of the 1920s, absorbed in family squabbles. International forces, however, drag each family out of their normal path and into a confusion of life, death and love. The writing is beautifully descriptive, portraying the individuals as unregarded pawns who are incapable of making sense of larger historical forces sweeping over them. Boyd's book is largely character driven. There are, honestly speaking, no African characters in the book at all. While one can certainly argue that using a large and obviously relevant group of people merely as a backdrop may seem strange, I appreciate that Boyd focuses on the characters whose story he is telling. This, in my opinion, is preferable to tacking on a modern view of the world through some "sensitive" character who will "understand" the "natives" as is so often done in contemporary historical novels.
June 7, 2012
As a fan of Boyd's I approach an unread, older book of his with some trepidation, in case it disappoints. But An Ice Cream War was one of the books that rightly made his early reputation and is a better novel than the comic A Good Man in Africa, which is clever but much less subtle. It takes a while to get into this second novel but the effort is worth it. The novel is best when it shifts its setting exclusively to East Africa, and there develops a complex plot with a surprising and clever twist. It successfully (to me) evokes the absurdity of war and how much one's chances of survival depend on luck (which is in short supply to the characters here). Also, it conjures several interwoven stories of friendships and (requited and unrequited)love affairs that are a product of war time and are convincingly depicted. I suspect, without knowing it, that the novel has its basis in the real histoy of this backwater conflict that took place as part of the 1914-18 war and which even continued after the main show had ended. It's an excellent story and shows the talent which Boyd deployed to even greater effect in his masterpiece, Any Human Heart.
October 1, 2020
William Boyd is a great historical fiction writer, but nothing quite measured up to the first book of his that I read: Any Human Heart, however this novel is the closest runner up so far.
Showcasing the absurdity of war, most of the novel is set in what was then German and British East Africa where colonial forces also fought out World War I . In Africa, there are farmers, the expatriate American, Walter Smith, and the half German/half English Erich von Bishop and his unhappy wife, Liesl, each who live just on the other side of the borderline between the two colonies; neighbors until war is declared. In England, the main characters are brothers Felix and Gabriel Cobb. They come from a military family and Gabriel is a newly engaged career soldier but Felix, the youngest, is a petulant teenager who despises the values held by his father and wants to go to Oxford to study.
While not a comedy exactly, the book does have more than a few funny moments and absurd characters (who are probably all completely based on real people – the truth is stranger than fiction). But it also is quite tragic at times – the loss of life in East Africa wasn’t as dramatic as on the battlefields of Europe, but this is about a war and the terrible things that happen to soldiers and civilians caught up in such violent events.
Showcasing the absurdity of war, most of the novel is set in what was then German and British East Africa where colonial forces also fought out World War I . In Africa, there are farmers, the expatriate American, Walter Smith, and the half German/half English Erich von Bishop and his unhappy wife, Liesl, each who live just on the other side of the borderline between the two colonies; neighbors until war is declared. In England, the main characters are brothers Felix and Gabriel Cobb. They come from a military family and Gabriel is a newly engaged career soldier but Felix, the youngest, is a petulant teenager who despises the values held by his father and wants to go to Oxford to study.
While not a comedy exactly, the book does have more than a few funny moments and absurd characters (who are probably all completely based on real people – the truth is stranger than fiction). But it also is quite tragic at times – the loss of life in East Africa wasn’t as dramatic as on the battlefields of Europe, but this is about a war and the terrible things that happen to soldiers and civilians caught up in such violent events.
February 10, 2020
This one from William Boyd is set in Africa during the First World War and is interesting from an historical point of view as I certainly didn't know much, if anything, about the war there. The characters are well drawn and the description is very good, as in all Boyd's books. The story is well told and I did enjoy it, although war and soldiers is not really my thing!
July 28, 2018
Early novel by William Boyd chronicling the travails of European settlers in East Africa during the First World War. With its diffuse plot, languorous descriptions of tropical torpor, oblivious Brits and Germans more concerned with petty squabbles, business interests and tawdry romances than the conflict raging around them, and a general sense of self-defeating complacency, the book often reads like a pastiche of E.M. Forster or Evelyn Waugh, though lacking their cutting insight. Boyd's prose style is adequate if occasionally overwrought, and the book's best passages provide droll humor and exciting battle scenes (particularly Boyd's depiction of the disastrous Battle of Tanga, where German bullets and killer bees savage a hapless British expedition). Yet it never really takes flight, since Boyd's characters remain resolute stock types (pompous Brits, fanatical Germans, bored colonial wives, obsequious natives, even a cynical, above-it-all American businessman) and the book's atmosphere and observations remain disappointingly static and workmanlike. It's a potentially fascinating, intermittently intriguing story in search of compelling protagonists and a worthy book.
October 5, 2012
Great book about two brothers and their experiences during the first world war, and the seemingly forgotten exsistence of the war in Africa. I've only read 2 books set in this place and time, African Queen and this, stacked against those set in Europe at the same time. The title of the book also has meaning, a war which everyone seems to think would melt away like ice-cream.
Felt sorry for Gabriel, the older brother who seems younger, more trusting than Felix. It's also Felix who the book seems to revolve around and his love for his older brother.
It's a fairly big book, but it seems to be over in no time, wanted to know what happened next.
Felt sorry for Gabriel, the older brother who seems younger, more trusting than Felix. It's also Felix who the book seems to revolve around and his love for his older brother.
It's a fairly big book, but it seems to be over in no time, wanted to know what happened next.
September 1, 2025
An Ice Cream War by William Boyd
10 out of 10
This excellent book by the talented William Boyd was nominated for the coveted Booker Prize and it is included on The Guardian list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
it describes with humor the events of World War I as they unfold in Eastern Africa, although the German troops would eventually be followed by the British as they move into Portuguese territory and then into the West, in Rhodesia and other lands.
The characters are interesting and often amusing, starting with the American Temple Smith, who has a farm in the British colony, near the German lands, sees his property occupied by the Germans, led by his neighbor, Major von Bishop, when he returns with an insurance man, the latter is killed and the American is aghast to find his Decorticator vanished, swearing revenge on the “Hun”.
Felix Cobb is another protagonist, who is spared the first part of the war, because his eyesight is not good enough, therefore he spends time in Oxford and at their ugly mansion, where early on his brother Gabriel is marrying Charis, a young woman who would get close to her brother-in-law later on.
After they marry, the newlyweds are driven by the gardener Cyril – man who would die along with so many in the awful conflict – to the next town, then they sail to France and spend some honey moon days on the coast of France, where their experience is rather outré and unexpected.
Gabriel does not seem to want to make love to his wife on the wedding night, which might be explainable given the exhaustion, but then he does not show any desire on the following night and when he does approach his new consort, it is not to have proper sex, but some kind of awkward intimacy that appears to continue on consequent occasions, reminding yours truly of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.
One day, Gabriel Cobb reads in the newspaper about the fact that the Austro- Hungarian Empire has entered a conflict in the Balkans, realizes that the war is about to begin for Britain and states to his wife that they need to cut short their honeymoon and return home immediately.
Gabriel would be sent to Eastern Africa, where he arrives after a prolonged, sickening journey to India and then to join the fight against the Germans near Dar Es Salam, in what appears to be an easy landing and victory, but proves difficult and during the clashes, the captain is hurt badly at his leg, as he tried to escape enemies and then he is bayoneted twice in his belly.
He would spend the remaining years of the war in a prisoner of war hospital, where he becomes infatuated with the wife of von Bishop, Liesl, a rather large woman who is working as a nurse and effective manager of the camp, where the British captain gathers some military information, but more in order to assuage his remorse than to do anything with it, until the moment when he is caught as he waited for the woman to take her regular bath, outside her hut.
Captain Cobb is then taken prisoner with the assumption that he was outside the home of von Bishop in order to gather intelligence and when they find the notebook with notes on the German military positions and movements it is considered enough prove that the man was a spy and he thinks he has to escape, asks the help of Liesl and when he gets it he runs North, hoping to join the advancing British forces.
Alas, the commander of the German troops sends von Bishop to catch the escapee, escorted by some local, vicious men, with a reputation of being cannibals and when they do find the man who had actually not been involved in espionage activities, busy as he was with his obsession for Liesl, there is a tragic miscommunication between the pursuing officer and his group, with calamitous consequences.
Meanwhile, Felix has been attracted for a spell by the artist sister of his friend and when that proved to be a failure, he started talking with his sister-in-law, Charis, given that they are both in and near the family mansion, their closeness gives way to an attraction and they have an affair, first in a hotel in the area, but as the man grows more impetuous, their love affair begins to take a toll on the woman, who takes an extreme measure to end it, saying that she had written to her husband and confessed everything, after which she goes beyond the edge.
Felix is desperate to join the army and follow his brother in Africa, where, after he arrives he witnesses the absurdity of a conflict in which he and his comrades are half starved to death, some die eating dead and buried animals that have been killed by the flies, an officer dies killed by friendly fire – the protagonist itself would be severely injured by an absurd man, Wheech- Browning, who is responsible for many senseless acts.
Temple Smith, Wheech – Browning and Felix are in the footsteps of von Bishop, who in turn is chasing after Gabriel, the American trying to exact revenge for his Decorticator – one of the amusing, preposterous aspects of the war- Felix in an effort to reunite with his brother, worried that he may get the letter from Charis, even if Liesl had told him that no letters have been received by the prisoner of war.
The horror of the war is evident in the fate of Gabriel, his wife, Charis, the German von Bishop and evidently the multitude of people who die, many of them – indeed, more of them killed by the Spanish Influenza than the weapons of destruction.
Felix is nearly killed, while in Portuguese territory where he is stationed as a liaison officer, sharing accommodation with a Portuguese officer who speaks no English, the exchanges between the two going through three languages, including French, and using “sim” most often, up to the point where a new artillery piece is demonstrated and the calamitous Wheech-Browning makes a mistake, bombs to death their host and nearly kills his compatriot.
A splendid book and a very happy discovery of a new author that has a few more books on the aforementioned Guardian list, including A Good Man in Africa, which is on the to-read soon agenda.
10 out of 10
This excellent book by the talented William Boyd was nominated for the coveted Booker Prize and it is included on The Guardian list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
it describes with humor the events of World War I as they unfold in Eastern Africa, although the German troops would eventually be followed by the British as they move into Portuguese territory and then into the West, in Rhodesia and other lands.
The characters are interesting and often amusing, starting with the American Temple Smith, who has a farm in the British colony, near the German lands, sees his property occupied by the Germans, led by his neighbor, Major von Bishop, when he returns with an insurance man, the latter is killed and the American is aghast to find his Decorticator vanished, swearing revenge on the “Hun”.
Felix Cobb is another protagonist, who is spared the first part of the war, because his eyesight is not good enough, therefore he spends time in Oxford and at their ugly mansion, where early on his brother Gabriel is marrying Charis, a young woman who would get close to her brother-in-law later on.
After they marry, the newlyweds are driven by the gardener Cyril – man who would die along with so many in the awful conflict – to the next town, then they sail to France and spend some honey moon days on the coast of France, where their experience is rather outré and unexpected.
Gabriel does not seem to want to make love to his wife on the wedding night, which might be explainable given the exhaustion, but then he does not show any desire on the following night and when he does approach his new consort, it is not to have proper sex, but some kind of awkward intimacy that appears to continue on consequent occasions, reminding yours truly of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.
One day, Gabriel Cobb reads in the newspaper about the fact that the Austro- Hungarian Empire has entered a conflict in the Balkans, realizes that the war is about to begin for Britain and states to his wife that they need to cut short their honeymoon and return home immediately.
Gabriel would be sent to Eastern Africa, where he arrives after a prolonged, sickening journey to India and then to join the fight against the Germans near Dar Es Salam, in what appears to be an easy landing and victory, but proves difficult and during the clashes, the captain is hurt badly at his leg, as he tried to escape enemies and then he is bayoneted twice in his belly.
He would spend the remaining years of the war in a prisoner of war hospital, where he becomes infatuated with the wife of von Bishop, Liesl, a rather large woman who is working as a nurse and effective manager of the camp, where the British captain gathers some military information, but more in order to assuage his remorse than to do anything with it, until the moment when he is caught as he waited for the woman to take her regular bath, outside her hut.
Captain Cobb is then taken prisoner with the assumption that he was outside the home of von Bishop in order to gather intelligence and when they find the notebook with notes on the German military positions and movements it is considered enough prove that the man was a spy and he thinks he has to escape, asks the help of Liesl and when he gets it he runs North, hoping to join the advancing British forces.
Alas, the commander of the German troops sends von Bishop to catch the escapee, escorted by some local, vicious men, with a reputation of being cannibals and when they do find the man who had actually not been involved in espionage activities, busy as he was with his obsession for Liesl, there is a tragic miscommunication between the pursuing officer and his group, with calamitous consequences.
Meanwhile, Felix has been attracted for a spell by the artist sister of his friend and when that proved to be a failure, he started talking with his sister-in-law, Charis, given that they are both in and near the family mansion, their closeness gives way to an attraction and they have an affair, first in a hotel in the area, but as the man grows more impetuous, their love affair begins to take a toll on the woman, who takes an extreme measure to end it, saying that she had written to her husband and confessed everything, after which she goes beyond the edge.
Felix is desperate to join the army and follow his brother in Africa, where, after he arrives he witnesses the absurdity of a conflict in which he and his comrades are half starved to death, some die eating dead and buried animals that have been killed by the flies, an officer dies killed by friendly fire – the protagonist itself would be severely injured by an absurd man, Wheech- Browning, who is responsible for many senseless acts.
Temple Smith, Wheech – Browning and Felix are in the footsteps of von Bishop, who in turn is chasing after Gabriel, the American trying to exact revenge for his Decorticator – one of the amusing, preposterous aspects of the war- Felix in an effort to reunite with his brother, worried that he may get the letter from Charis, even if Liesl had told him that no letters have been received by the prisoner of war.
The horror of the war is evident in the fate of Gabriel, his wife, Charis, the German von Bishop and evidently the multitude of people who die, many of them – indeed, more of them killed by the Spanish Influenza than the weapons of destruction.
Felix is nearly killed, while in Portuguese territory where he is stationed as a liaison officer, sharing accommodation with a Portuguese officer who speaks no English, the exchanges between the two going through three languages, including French, and using “sim” most often, up to the point where a new artillery piece is demonstrated and the calamitous Wheech-Browning makes a mistake, bombs to death their host and nearly kills his compatriot.
A splendid book and a very happy discovery of a new author that has a few more books on the aforementioned Guardian list, including A Good Man in Africa, which is on the to-read soon agenda.
March 6, 2011
I read this as I was working my way through past Booker Prize nominated novels and it really made an impression on me, not because of the story necessarily but because of the wonderful amosphere of the book. I could almost believe that Boyd had lived during WWI. Felix Cobb follows his brother to fight in East Africa and becomes changed as a person by doing so. There is some beautiful writing in the novel and it's wonderfully paced. I like it better than some of William Boyd's later stuff.
February 16, 2025
A World War I story shifting from England to Africa and back. "Funny, assured, a seriocomic romp" was a review excerpt on the back of the paperback I read. Far more "serio" than "comic" though. Although this tale was set in Africa I couldn't help constantly hoping for some Blackadder Goes Forth type humour. Any here was perhaps a bit too subtle for me.
December 22, 2023
‘I don’t know,’ Temple said with some vehemence. ‘It just doesn’t make any kind of sense at all.’
Thesis statements
Thesis statements
January 19, 2024
Уильям Бойд - жутко недооценённый автор. Возможно, свою роль тут играет объём его романов. В своё время я прочитала “Нутро любого человека” из серии “Премия Букера” Росмэна, и она была раза в два больше любой другой книги этой серии. На поверку оказывается, что объёма даже недостаточно - книги Бойда настолько великолепны, что хочется ещё. Они очень ироничны, но при этом о серьёзном. От “Мороженной войны” (pun intended) я смеялась в голос множество раз, но при этом как раз в тот момент кто-нибудь умирал и довольно страшной смертью - всё-таки война, и далеко не самая цивилизованная.
Действие разворачивается в Африке во время Первой мировой войны. Впервые становится понятно, насколько же она мировая - немецкая и британская колония приступают к нешуточным военным действиям. Правда, эта часть войны имеет свою специфику: помимо того, что настолько жарко, что солдаты тают как мороженое, ещё в Африке бывает сезон дождей, когда любое действие прекращается на 3 месяца.
Война здесь показана как максимально бессмыссленное действо. Как “Уловка-22”, но ещё более забавно и интересно. На британской стороне царит полный хаос, но больше всего доставляет персонифицированное воплощение бессмыссленной бюрократической машины - герой, который за время книги сменяет несколько официальных постов, но везде, где он появляется, происходит бессмысленное и крайне жестокое убийство.
На самом деле смешна и нелепа, но убийственно нелепа, у Бойда не только война, но и вся жизнь. От его книг оторваться просто невозможно - в них сразу влюбляешь без остатка. С ними смешно и страшно - всё как в жизни. И они такие же огромные, да. Очень стоят прочтения.
Действие разворачивается в Африке во время Первой мировой войны. Впервые становится понятно, насколько же она мировая - немецкая и британская колония приступают к нешуточным военным действиям. Правда, эта часть войны имеет свою специфику: помимо того, что настолько жарко, что солдаты тают как мороженое, ещё в Африке бывает сезон дождей, когда любое действие прекращается на 3 месяца.
Война здесь показана как максимально бессмыссленное действо. Как “Уловка-22”, но ещё более забавно и интересно. На британской стороне царит полный хаос, но больше всего доставляет персонифицированное воплощение бессмыссленной бюрократической машины - герой, который за время книги сменяет несколько официальных постов, но везде, где он появляется, происходит бессмысленное и крайне жестокое убийство.
На самом деле смешна и нелепа, но убийственно нелепа, у Бойда не только война, но и вся жизнь. От его книг оторваться просто невозможно - в них сразу влюбляешь без остатка. С ними смешно и страшно - всё как в жизни. И они такие же огромные, да. Очень стоят прочтения.
January 6, 2022
One of the early William Boyd books - maybe be the first, although there is a question posted here suggesting it might be a good man in Africa.
I have to admit, I thought the title would mean it was about the Glasgow Ice Cream War - where 1980s crims were selling drugs from Ice Cream Vans.
No - this is an ambitious book covering the whole of WWI but from a unique perspective - from the British and German Empires in Eastern Africa.
Lots of characters and movement between location and times (always pressing forwards) - we have an American Farmer, some half British/German farmers - getting along peacefully in the pre-war days. Then there is a posh English Family - the son starting by getting married and honeymooning in Normandy in the week that the war is declared - and his wife, who seems a touch anachronistic.
It an interesting read - combining a thrilling story, with historical detail and some comedic set pieces and it very nearly works as great the great literature that he went on to write - and also invoking McEwan and Faulks in some of the themes.
However, I never became 100% bought into the characters and as a result, some of the story failed to truely hit home. This may have been the story-telling or may have been me not giving it 100% attention. It seemed a little like one of those books that I could feel slipping away from me in terms of understanding and enjoyment.
I have to admit, I thought the title would mean it was about the Glasgow Ice Cream War - where 1980s crims were selling drugs from Ice Cream Vans.
No - this is an ambitious book covering the whole of WWI but from a unique perspective - from the British and German Empires in Eastern Africa.
Lots of characters and movement between location and times (always pressing forwards) - we have an American Farmer, some half British/German farmers - getting along peacefully in the pre-war days. Then there is a posh English Family - the son starting by getting married and honeymooning in Normandy in the week that the war is declared - and his wife, who seems a touch anachronistic.
It an interesting read - combining a thrilling story, with historical detail and some comedic set pieces and it very nearly works as great the great literature that he went on to write - and also invoking McEwan and Faulks in some of the themes.
However, I never became 100% bought into the characters and as a result, some of the story failed to truely hit home. This may have been the story-telling or may have been me not giving it 100% attention. It seemed a little like one of those books that I could feel slipping away from me in terms of understanding and enjoyment.
March 22, 2018
After much tension and speculation, World War I begins. The main campaign is contended on the Western Front, but there is also a less well-known offensive in colonial East Africa, where the British and their native conscripts are pitted against the Tanganyika-based Germans. It is here that newly-wed Englishman Gabriel Cobb is deployed.
Back at home in Stackpole, Kent are Gabriel’s family. They include his estranged wife, his eccentric father and younger brother, Felix. The story oscillates between Kent and German and British East Africa. There are a host of colourful and in some instances caricatured characters. Amongst the most memorable is a comical, Kenya-dwelling American whose passion is his decorticator (agricultural-processing machine).
An Ice-Cream War’s motif is the absurdness of war. Boyd is unwavering in presenting the East African campaign as chaotic and futile. The book’s grave content is laced with humour of the dark variety. There are occasional gruesome descriptions.
This unpredictable serio-comedy’s blend of tragedy and black humour appealed to this reader, who empathised with the fair Europeans perspiring in the African heat. And the East African campaign was of particular interest to him, having visited as a child one of the battlefields on the banks of Tanzania’s Rufiji River.
Back at home in Stackpole, Kent are Gabriel’s family. They include his estranged wife, his eccentric father and younger brother, Felix. The story oscillates between Kent and German and British East Africa. There are a host of colourful and in some instances caricatured characters. Amongst the most memorable is a comical, Kenya-dwelling American whose passion is his decorticator (agricultural-processing machine).
An Ice-Cream War’s motif is the absurdness of war. Boyd is unwavering in presenting the East African campaign as chaotic and futile. The book’s grave content is laced with humour of the dark variety. There are occasional gruesome descriptions.
This unpredictable serio-comedy’s blend of tragedy and black humour appealed to this reader, who empathised with the fair Europeans perspiring in the African heat. And the East African campaign was of particular interest to him, having visited as a child one of the battlefields on the banks of Tanzania’s Rufiji River.
August 28, 2012
A highly emotive book, chock-full of of black humour and complex characters.
I think William Boyd is one of my favourite authors. He writes completely wonderfully, believably flawed, darkly humorous characters. I would call him a Dickens of the 20th/21st Century, but that would suggest that I had actually ever read any Dickens.
This book follows the Cobb brothers and their experiences in WW1. Gabriel is the admired older brother who turns out to be a bit of a wet blanket whilst Felix is the feckless younger sibling with no direction in life (and undeniably the more interesting of the two, of course!). They both are billeted to East Africa and there is a sense of heavy dusty sweatiness throughout the book.
WIth the litany of calamitous characters it could have been a bit Carry on Up the Rufiji but Boyd deftly avoids farce and manages to capture (what I can only imagine) is the ridiculous nature of men at war.
It took me ages to finish (partly because I was hit by an unexpectedly upsetting twist near the end which made me put the book back on the shelf for a while) but it was worth it.
I think William Boyd is one of my favourite authors. He writes completely wonderfully, believably flawed, darkly humorous characters. I would call him a Dickens of the 20th/21st Century, but that would suggest that I had actually ever read any Dickens.
This book follows the Cobb brothers and their experiences in WW1. Gabriel is the admired older brother who turns out to be a bit of a wet blanket whilst Felix is the feckless younger sibling with no direction in life (and undeniably the more interesting of the two, of course!). They both are billeted to East Africa and there is a sense of heavy dusty sweatiness throughout the book.
WIth the litany of calamitous characters it could have been a bit Carry on Up the Rufiji but Boyd deftly avoids farce and manages to capture (what I can only imagine) is the ridiculous nature of men at war.
It took me ages to finish (partly because I was hit by an unexpectedly upsetting twist near the end which made me put the book back on the shelf for a while) but it was worth it.
October 21, 2025
I may have been less annoyed by this book if the blurb hadn't been so incredibly misleading. Either way, it was like a satire of every stereotype of male writers: obsession with genitals, poorly written women, and a general lack of emotional intelligence. 2D and boring.
March 5, 2008
Every time you think you know your history, you find some weird pocket that had been overlooked and how World War I hostilities played out in the african colonies was not something I'd considered. Another example of the stupidity of nationalism in general and war in particular as neighbors overnight feel the need to act out what's happening in the home countries and the tragedy of war after the war is over.
November 2, 2022
I’m not fond of war novels and tend to avoid them altogether like a plague not so much because of the bloody killings of hundreds of thousands of innocent people but … yeah that’s precisely why. It’s so bad that the copy of “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque that I bought but never got enough courage to open has been sitting there gathering dust for more than 10 years now. That’s why, if it’s not for the only book club that I have, I wouldn’t have picked “An Ice-Cream War” by William Boyd.
It’s summer 1914: the news of the assasination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand has just broken out, sending the whole western civilization into pandemonium and proceeding to a stage of worldwide crisis. However, the book shifted focus of the war far away from France, the epicenter of World War I, into the heart of African jungle, where the British and German colonies there faced each other across the border of present-day Kenya and Tanzania.
Through his lush vocabulary and rich choice of words, Boyd guides us through a multitude of episodes and varied characters, portraying their intertwined fates in the midst of an absurd, wasteful war. Each character, who initially has strong resilience and palpable mindset, found themselves at the mercy of the circumstances and being hopeless in the face of the stronger current of events. Not one has even barely succeeded in achieving their initial goal: Gabriel Cobb is enthusiastically preparing for the war that he forgo the rest of his honeymoon altogether only to find himself annihilated by the boredom of prolonged sea travels, incapacitated in the sweltering African heat and savored the bitter taste of defeat on the first day of battle; Felix is similarly engaged in the idea of attending Oxford and its promising day of insightful intellectual discussion with mental giants only to find the lackluster academic scene and humiliating social engagements; Charis who welcomes her matrimonial bliss with open arms has stood by when the war foiled her marriage and disheartened her with acute lonesomeness; Von Bishop who saluted his patriotic duty with favorable reception got overwhelmed with the unprecedented problems of commanding men whose culture he does not understand and whose language he does not even speak, and eventually ended his life not on the tip of an enemy’s bayonet like one would be prepared for in the battlefield, but by the unstoppable spreads of Spanish Influenza. It is, essentially, a story of where everyone failed successfully.
It presents a lot of viewpoints and characters, allowing us to witness how the story unfolds from different perspectives. In doing so, it gives the otherwise flat narrative a layered reality and perceptible richness that was possibly hard to accomplish by a single narrator. Unfortunately, Boyd does not share a lot of rooms in which the complexity and details of each characters’ psychological turmoil could be focused on. Felix and Charis’ infidelity, for one, is not well-reasoned as their individual motivation was not quite explained, leaving this part of the novel and their supposedly grave decision only presented to serve as a plot device to catapult Felix into the middle of African war.
It is always refreshing to observe the way human existences are dwarfed by the history through which they live and see how the man-made war has thwarted their own endeavor in an utterly ridiculous, comic way —up to the point we realize that it came solely from a white perspective of colonized countries, where the caucasian thrives on the misery of the colored people. We were spoonfed with the inconvenience the privileged characters experienced in this unfamiliar, alien territory: they complained of the unbearable high temperature, whining about diminishing financial prospects as a result of the war, or disappointed because they couldn’t achieve any sort of glory they thought they deserve. It is an entirely selfish, whitewashed view as it’s blissfully forgetful of the fact that not only the whites who were at disadvantage at that time, but most importantly, the indigenous people of Africa. Most of the African soldier were forcibly recruited and treated in horrible discrimination. They were commanded to carry out the task that were deemed too difficult for regular soldiers, such as bringing army supplies which could not be moved by conventional methods like road, rail or packanimal. The war has also caused more than 150000 of civilians casualties, not to mention those who survived but ended up disabled and wounded —physically and psychologically. To be frank, the title itself could be interpreted on so many levels: is it because the white, like ice-cream, could dissolve easily under the sun that their war would turn into a messy meltdown on the Dark Continent?
Debatably, Boyd purported Temple Smith (Walter in US version) as a character who somewhat shows ‘woke’ qualities, as he inwardly condemned Wheech-Browning of heartless judgment against a colored person but at the same time he could happily subjected his own farmhands to physical abuse and never see them as people with fundamental rights —not so much for a picture-perfect righteous character everyone could root for. I’m not sure why Boyd forgoes the Black perspective entirely even though he recounted the part of war that happens exclusively on African soil, but I conclusively blame on him being white.
It’s summer 1914: the news of the assasination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand has just broken out, sending the whole western civilization into pandemonium and proceeding to a stage of worldwide crisis. However, the book shifted focus of the war far away from France, the epicenter of World War I, into the heart of African jungle, where the British and German colonies there faced each other across the border of present-day Kenya and Tanzania.
Through his lush vocabulary and rich choice of words, Boyd guides us through a multitude of episodes and varied characters, portraying their intertwined fates in the midst of an absurd, wasteful war. Each character, who initially has strong resilience and palpable mindset, found themselves at the mercy of the circumstances and being hopeless in the face of the stronger current of events. Not one has even barely succeeded in achieving their initial goal: Gabriel Cobb is enthusiastically preparing for the war that he forgo the rest of his honeymoon altogether only to find himself annihilated by the boredom of prolonged sea travels, incapacitated in the sweltering African heat and savored the bitter taste of defeat on the first day of battle; Felix is similarly engaged in the idea of attending Oxford and its promising day of insightful intellectual discussion with mental giants only to find the lackluster academic scene and humiliating social engagements; Charis who welcomes her matrimonial bliss with open arms has stood by when the war foiled her marriage and disheartened her with acute lonesomeness; Von Bishop who saluted his patriotic duty with favorable reception got overwhelmed with the unprecedented problems of commanding men whose culture he does not understand and whose language he does not even speak, and eventually ended his life not on the tip of an enemy’s bayonet like one would be prepared for in the battlefield, but by the unstoppable spreads of Spanish Influenza. It is, essentially, a story of where everyone failed successfully.
It presents a lot of viewpoints and characters, allowing us to witness how the story unfolds from different perspectives. In doing so, it gives the otherwise flat narrative a layered reality and perceptible richness that was possibly hard to accomplish by a single narrator. Unfortunately, Boyd does not share a lot of rooms in which the complexity and details of each characters’ psychological turmoil could be focused on. Felix and Charis’ infidelity, for one, is not well-reasoned as their individual motivation was not quite explained, leaving this part of the novel and their supposedly grave decision only presented to serve as a plot device to catapult Felix into the middle of African war.
It is always refreshing to observe the way human existences are dwarfed by the history through which they live and see how the man-made war has thwarted their own endeavor in an utterly ridiculous, comic way —up to the point we realize that it came solely from a white perspective of colonized countries, where the caucasian thrives on the misery of the colored people. We were spoonfed with the inconvenience the privileged characters experienced in this unfamiliar, alien territory: they complained of the unbearable high temperature, whining about diminishing financial prospects as a result of the war, or disappointed because they couldn’t achieve any sort of glory they thought they deserve. It is an entirely selfish, whitewashed view as it’s blissfully forgetful of the fact that not only the whites who were at disadvantage at that time, but most importantly, the indigenous people of Africa. Most of the African soldier were forcibly recruited and treated in horrible discrimination. They were commanded to carry out the task that were deemed too difficult for regular soldiers, such as bringing army supplies which could not be moved by conventional methods like road, rail or packanimal. The war has also caused more than 150000 of civilians casualties, not to mention those who survived but ended up disabled and wounded —physically and psychologically. To be frank, the title itself could be interpreted on so many levels: is it because the white, like ice-cream, could dissolve easily under the sun that their war would turn into a messy meltdown on the Dark Continent?
Debatably, Boyd purported Temple Smith (Walter in US version) as a character who somewhat shows ‘woke’ qualities, as he inwardly condemned Wheech-Browning of heartless judgment against a colored person but at the same time he could happily subjected his own farmhands to physical abuse and never see them as people with fundamental rights —not so much for a picture-perfect righteous character everyone could root for. I’m not sure why Boyd forgoes the Black perspective entirely even though he recounted the part of war that happens exclusively on African soil, but I conclusively blame on him being white.
June 2, 2020
I found this novel utterly compelling, and felt that the author knew Africa intimately. It made me want to travel to east Africa specifically, and discover the beauty of the region, most particularly its beaches. Along with Brazzaville Beach, which is my favourite Boyd novel so far, it is one that I would both return to and recommend to others. Beautifully written.
September 5, 2022
A month ago I hadn't heard of Boyd, and now he seems to be everywhere: this book appeared nestled by my feet at a friend's house; others of Boyd's were looking back at me in a small secondhand bookshop; he turned up as screenwriter in a random film I tried on a whim; and of course in both the Somerset Maugham and Booker lists. It turns out Boyd is a fairly major name, and his inclusion in the Penguin 'Decades' series was a good omen given the 1970s titles have recently given me some excellent novels by Susan Hill, William Trevor and Penelope Lively.
'An Ice-Cream War' was a step forward from 'A Good Man in Africa' (oddly the sleeve of this addition mistakenly claims the former to be Boyd's 'first novel'). The Prologue is worth a read especially to those like me who are new to his work, as it places Boyd within a lineage of literary bloodlines. My preference for this novel is possibly because it felt more akin to J.G. Farrell than Kingsley Amis, with an accent on grimly comedic tragedy rather than smug Kafka-meets-Waugh tales of the little man caught in stuffy British conventions. Cynical blokish whimsy runs through, but not enough to detract from the bigger picture.
There is one comparison I thought was missing, unless I overlooked it. More than any other book 'An Ice-Cream War' reminded me of Thomas Kennelly's 'Confederates', and to a lesser extent (although historically more closely related) earlier 'Gossip From the Forest'. All zoom into lesser-explored aspect of endlessly-covered wars, including tales of the 'losers'*. Two include German experiences in WWI ('Ice-Cream' and 'Gossip'), and another two weave prosaic stories of domestic plans into a grimly comedic narrative of disruption and the capricious destruction of front-lines that are relatively close to home ('Ice-Cream' and 'Confederates'). 'Confederates' on the American Civil War remains my favourite but Boyd does an excellent job in bringing to light the lesser known East African sphere of the First World War.
The end chases to a close with a perverse Boys Own energy, and I actually preferred the first 2/3rds, even though it remained fairly gripping. You'll potentially remain interested in the fate of the decorticator, as much as the family and brothers-in-arms that span this ambitious novel.
*Accepting here that there weren't really any winners in these wars.
'An Ice-Cream War' was a step forward from 'A Good Man in Africa' (oddly the sleeve of this addition mistakenly claims the former to be Boyd's 'first novel'). The Prologue is worth a read especially to those like me who are new to his work, as it places Boyd within a lineage of literary bloodlines. My preference for this novel is possibly because it felt more akin to J.G. Farrell than Kingsley Amis, with an accent on grimly comedic tragedy rather than smug Kafka-meets-Waugh tales of the little man caught in stuffy British conventions. Cynical blokish whimsy runs through, but not enough to detract from the bigger picture.
There is one comparison I thought was missing, unless I overlooked it. More than any other book 'An Ice-Cream War' reminded me of Thomas Kennelly's 'Confederates', and to a lesser extent (although historically more closely related) earlier 'Gossip From the Forest'. All zoom into lesser-explored aspect of endlessly-covered wars, including tales of the 'losers'*. Two include German experiences in WWI ('Ice-Cream' and 'Gossip'), and another two weave prosaic stories of domestic plans into a grimly comedic narrative of disruption and the capricious destruction of front-lines that are relatively close to home ('Ice-Cream' and 'Confederates'). 'Confederates' on the American Civil War remains my favourite but Boyd does an excellent job in bringing to light the lesser known East African sphere of the First World War.
The end chases to a close with a perverse Boys Own energy, and I actually preferred the first 2/3rds, even though it remained fairly gripping. You'll potentially remain interested in the fate of the decorticator, as much as the family and brothers-in-arms that span this ambitious novel.
*Accepting here that there weren't really any winners in these wars.
November 17, 2022
We’ll get all the positives in first - Boyd writes well & is capable of conveying in few words that sense of bumbling ineptitude that is so often this country’s default setting in peace & war. Some of the set-pieces are blackly funny - a battle influenced by bees & trying to work insurance claims for commandeered items. There is a critical edge in this book but it is dull compared with Waugh or even Heller. Maybe unfair to bracket Boyd with them but they nail the futility & idiocy better & still manage to raise a smile or at least a grimace. The narrative feels very disjointed early on & it is only when the home front is removed from the plot that the story flows. It was an entertaining Boyd that will encourage further reading in the hope he utterly nails ideas & plot at once. That will be something.
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