This is one of my hardbacks that I finished Fr 10/17/97, and I refinished very early the morning after Xmas; (3am-430am, in bed) Tu 12/26/17. I remember the movie, another smash by Ang Lee, and I want to watch it again.
New Canaan, Connecticut- Friday, the day after Thanksgiving- 1973
Ben and Elena Hood- Ben, stock broker/ alcoholic. Elena, is looking for a change and fed up with Ben's detached drunkenness. She's an advocate of 'self help'.
Wendy Hood- 14 yr old; sexually promiscuous (curious). Has sex with Mike Williams. Her father, Ben, has had sex with Janey, his lover, when he finds Mike and Wendy in the basement after a grope. Ben resents Mike; "The little shit". Wendy has also tried lesbian sex with a girlfriend.
Paul Hood- At a private academy and he is pursuing a very rich girl, Libbets Casey. Her family lives on Park Avenue in NYC. She only wants to be friends with him.
Jim and Janey Williams- Jim ends up with Elena after Ben passes out in the bathroom at the swingers party. When the keys are exchanged, Ben, drunk out of his mind, tries to leave with Janey, but she goes with the teenager who drew her key.
Mike Williams- During the height of the ice storm, Mike walks through the neighborhood and is electrocuted when he stopped to sit on a guardrail. A downed power line connects with his seat.
Sandy Williams- Sandy is also 14 yrs old and drinks vodka and has sex with Wendy the night of the ice storm. They are discovered by Jim and Elena shortly before everyone learns that Mike has been killed.
Plot summary from the book's page at wikipedia-
"The novel takes place over Thanksgiving weekend 1973, during a dangerous ice storm and centers on two neighboring families, the Hoods and the Williamses, and the difficulties they have dealing with the tumultuous political and social climate of the day, in affluent suburban Connecticut, during the height of the sexual revolution. The novel is narrated from four different perspectives, each of them a member of the two families, who are promoting their own opinion and views of the several complications that arise throughout the novel, including their encounters and daily life. The Hood family is overridden with lies: Ben is currently in an affair with his married neighbor Janey, his wife Elena is alienated, her daughter ventures on her own sexual liaisons with both females and males of her age, including her neighbors Mikey and Sandy.
The Hoods are Ben, Elena, Paul and Wendy and the Williamses are Jim, Janey, Mikey, and Sandy. The story focuses on the 24 hours when a major ice storm strikes the town of New Canaan, Connecticut, just as both families are melting down from the parents' alcoholism, escapism and adultery, and their children's drug use and sexual experimentation."
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