Icebergs

by Rebecca Johns

In World War II Canada, Walt Dunmore and Al Clark are the only members of their bomber crew to survive a plane wreck on Newfoundland's Labrador coast-but now they must fight injuries and cold in the sub-zero wilderness. On the home front, in a small Canadian farming community, Walt's young wife Dottie struggles with her own loneliness, worry, and an attraction to an itinerant farm worker. Only one man comes home alive from Labrador, but the lives of their two families remain forever entwined. An ambitious and lyrical debut novel, Icebergs explores how tragedies narrowly averted can alter the course of lives as drastically as those met head-on..

Genres: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fiction, Historical

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2006

About the author

Rebecca Johns is the author of two novels, Icebergs (Bloomsbury USA, 2006), which was a PEN/Hemingway Finalist, and The Countess (Crown 2010), which has been translated around the world. Her writing has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Ploughshares, Printer's Row Journal, the Mississippi Review, the Harvard Review, and Narrative, and numerous commercial magazines and newspapers such as Bride's, Cosmopolitan, Fitness, Mademoiselle, Self, Seventeen and Woman's Day. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Missouri School of Journalism, she is the director of the MFA/MA program in creative writing at DePaul University in Chicago.

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's much I like about this book, including some beautiful writing and the Canadian setting in the first section. What threw me off was the structure. I was committed to a set of characters in the 1944 section, I was unprepared to switch not only time period (section two jumps to 1967, then to 1999)but POV. I wasn't ready to leave the original characters; it took me a long time to feel connected to their children 23 years later. I never got into the swing of things for the rest of the book. Characters I most loved and wanted to spend time with became peripheral shadows in the background. This book reminded me of how much I occasionally bond with one or more characters who remain with me long after I finish the book.

[Toni Reese · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. My hypercritical inner voice awoke in the 2nd sentence: "Below the plane was the coast of Labrador--low black mountains and snow-covered woods..." Wait a minute! Why would the mountains be black if the trees were snow-covered? They would be snow-covered too.

I almost quit the book then and there, but I'm a sucker for survival stories, and there was Walt, a World War II Canadian airman, and his plane is about to go down. What will happen next? So I kept reading.

Unfortunately for me, the reader, but lucky for Walt, he was rescued early on. Being stuck in the woods was the best part of the book. Of course, the other 4 crewmen all died, foreshadowing the unrelenting current of sadness that ran through this book.

I'm not sorry I read the whole thing, but I think if I had to do it over again, I would have left Walt going down in his plane over mountains that would not be black.

[Frances Harding · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rebecca Johns is a good enough writer, but this book seems to be the effort of a lazy writer. She begins a story line beautifully; however, she jumps out of the original thread to another which takes place more than twenty years later. If she feels the need to fill in a missing piece about the intervening years, she does it in a quick flashback, a "device" I have noticed coming out of the Iowa Writers' Workshop lately. As a result, the book comes off as an episodic collection of three novellas in order to bring it in under 300 or so pages. I enjoy reading long novels with all the pieces in place: What kind of marriage did Walt and Dottie have after his return? What influences and forces molded their sons to become the men they were? Johns has talent. I would like to see her use it to tell the complete story.

[Raima Larter · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing multi-generational saga that follows two families from the post-WWII era through Vietnam and beyond. The characters are very well-drawn and their inner lives presented in a way that is extremely compelling.

The opening scene, involving a plane crash (not a spoiler, since you learn this on page 1) is extremely gripping, and I could not put the book down for the first full third of the book. After that, we skip ahead twenty or so years to the next generation and follow the children of the men in the opening scene as well as their wives and other people they're connected to. In the end, the individual stories are fully knit together and we learn the meaning of the title: that people are like icebergs. You only see a small amount above the surface, but below they are deep and vast and amazing. Such a great book!

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was first published in 2006. Several years ago it was removed from our library's shelves and sold in their book sale. This is where I bought it. It's been sitting on my bookshelves since then. What a find. A very compelling story, over a period of 50 years, in Canada and the US, interesting characters, different families whose lives are interconnected. A real pleasure.

[LS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I could click on 3.5 not 3 ... the other reviews cover my reactions well: novel's irresistible start, great 1st third of the book ... that spreads out into its 2 future/contemporary settings, diluting that initial intimacy & connection. Nevertheless, throughout, the intelligent detail and often lyrical, eloquent observations kept the pages turning. Most memorable for me ... is a comparison of someone's perception to a room full of mirrors ... which instantly translated into utter clarity re a narcissist who threatens democracy now. I'll have to go back and try to find that exact quotation/page. Fine to spend time in this author's mind.

[Layla Sabourian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, Iceberg is a hauntingly beautiful and thought-provoking novel that will resonate with readers who enjoy psychological depth and exploration of the human spirit. Johns’ ability to intertwine the unforgiving landscape with her characters’ emotional journeys makes this a standout work of literary fiction. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy stories of survival and introspection

[Grace Burtt-Dykstra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding! Remarkable for a first novel. Wang to read more...

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got a bit lost with the time changes then the memories in the 3 times. Was a bit hard to track where in time I was reading.

[Buchdoktor · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Eine Kriegsgeschichte ist nur dann wahr, sagte Sams Vater immer zu ihnen, wenn man nicht als Held darin vorkommt. Es geht nie darum, was geschah, sondern um den Schock, dass man sich auf der anderen Seite befindet und noch am Leben ist. Die Geschiche kann lustig sein oder todernst, aber wenn jemand euch zu erzählen versucht, wie er den Feind weggepustet hat, wenn der Bursche euch seine Narben und seine Medaillen zeigt, dann sagt er euch nicht die Wahrheit."

Walt Dunmore war der Bordfunker. Er hatte sich im Zweiten Weltkrieg zur kanadischen Luftwaffe gemeldet, um mal aus Kanada herauszukommen. Walt versprach sich vom Dienst in der Armee, dass er etwas für sein späteres Leben lernen würde. Die Maschine mit Josef, der aus Polen kam, Al und einem dritten Kameraden flog als Begleitschutz für Schiffe im Nordatlantik. Auf dem Rückflug von einem Einsatz stürzt die Maschine über dem menschenleeren Labrador ab, die Nase bohrt sich in den Schnee, Al und Walt werden herausgeschleudert. Walt überlebt den Absturz als einziger. Wegen Erfrierungen an den Händen wird Walt sein Leben lang die Spuren des Krieges vor Augen haben. Walt ist ein typischer Naturbursche, der schon als Junge mit seinem Vater gemeinsam als Landvermesser gearbeitet hatte. Sein Haus nicht mit eigenen Händen zu bauen und seine Familie später nicht mit seiner Hände Arbeit zu ernähren, ist für ihn unvorstellbar.

Walts Frau Dottie hat jahrelang auf die Rückkehr ihres Mannes gewartet und ist nun froh, dass sie nicht mehr bei ihren Eltern leben muss. Sie hat Walt geheiratet, weil er ein ernsthafter Mann ist, der von sich sagt, dass er nicht mit den Gefühlen anderer spielt. Walt erfüllt die letzten Wünsche seiner Kameraden und besucht Als Witwe mit ihrem Baby. Über Angelegenheiten seiner Kameraden, die nicht für die Ohren der Angehörigen bestimmt sind, schweigt Walt bis zu seinem Tod. Dass Walt Als Leben nicht retten konnte, wird seine Familie und Al Clarks Witwe Adele unbewusst jahrzehntelang miteinander verbinden. Zwanzig Jahre später sind beide Familien nach Chicago gezogen, die beiden Söhne der Dunmores und Als Tochter Caroline, die beim Tod ihres Vaters erst ein Baby war, wachsen wie Geschwister gemeinsam auf. Caroline liebt Sam, Sam kann sich nicht entscheiden. Charley ist ein netter Typ, aber genügt das? Es ist schwer jemanden zu lieben, mit dem man schon immer zusammen war. Obwohl Sam als gebürtiger Kanadier nicht von der US-Armee eingezogen werden kann, meldet er sich freiwillig zum Einsatz in Vietnam. Dottie ist entsetzt. Die Geschichte kann sich doch nicht in der nächsten Generation wiederholen?

Rebecca Johns ist mit ihrem für den PEN/Hemningway Award For First Fiction nominierten Erstlingsroman eine melancholische, zärtliche Familiengeschichte gelungen, die die Zeit vom Zweiten Weltkrieg bis 1999 umspannt. Abwechselnd mit wunderbaren Anekdoten aus Dotties und Walts Kindheit lernen wir bescheidene, arbeitsame Menschen kennen, die sich nur eine Familie und ein eigenes Heim wünschen. Eine einfache Geschichte, die voller stimmungsvoller Details und allgemeingültiger Weisheiten steckt. Wer Donna Morrissey oder Ann-Marie MacDonald mag, wird von dem Buch nicht enttäuscht sein.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was...fine. I had high expectations, and the book's teaser of "a secret that will shake their existence" was not at all something that happened. Spoiler (and not a big one): a girl kissed a guy when she was married. A guy lied and got engaged to another woman while married. And then he died, so you can't at all see what would have happened. These things were tangential to the story, not really that relevant. The setting itself - Canada in the second world war - was new and interesting. I really wish I would have felt more invested in that tale.

I will say, I read this on kindle, so I don't know if this happened in the book, but the book jumped time a fair amount, and there were no paragraph or line breaks when that happened in my kindle version. There were normally lines plus a small indent for paragraphs, but then if it was switching to 20 years ago or 30 years forward, it just kept going. Maddening. It sometimes took me a page or two to realize, "Oh. We've switched again. Sonofagun."

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a beautifully written book, a remarkable debut for this Illinois author. The story unfolds in three eras: 1944, when a Canadian military crew crash lands in Newfoundland and the crew's young wives in Ontario await the news of their husbands' fates; 1967 Chicago as these families' lives become deeply intertwined; 1999 Ontario- a return to where their shared histories began. The story examines love, disappointment, passion and change in relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, friends. The characters are wholly rendered and believable, as is the original story. I look forward to more from this strong and compassionate voice.

[Safiya · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting novel, not ground-breaking but an enjoyable read, not the least because it is set in the unusual backdrop of Canadians drafted during WWII and of immigrant Canadians to the US drafted during the Vietnam war. However, I found the tag line "Two wars, two families, united by tragedy, bound by deceit" a bit excessive, as there isn't much a deceit to speak of, it is there, but it is not dramatised much, and doesn't impact the characters much, and thus doesn't actually seem very important after all.

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book but there were too many gaps. What happened when Walt came home? Too much skipping ahead, I know there were flashbacks from different viewpoints but still too much left out. I suppose it kind of came together at the end but not as much as much as I would like.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thi

[Jessica Hartshorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have loved this even if I didn't know the author! It's really ambitious and fascinating.

[Laura Carpenter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Wonderful first novel. I'm waiting for her next one!

[Jennifer Burrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice story - good writing. Would definitely reccomend

[Melissa Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

very well written. sad, but I am glad I kept reading if for the last scene alone...redemption in the end.