The Ice House

Nina Bawden's great talent is to be able to take you along a perfectly ordinary street, rip the facade away and show the strange and passionate events that go on behind closed doors' Daily Telegraph

The Ice House is about adultery - adultery with a twist that throws a light on human fantasies and powers of self-deception.

'A darkly comedic tale of adultery that features a dangerously "good" and disciplined heroine' KIRKUS REVIEWS

'Throughout her career Bawden has concentrated on the careful depiction of character, feelings and behaviour' GUARDIAN

At fifteen, Daisy, confident and cherished, is appalled to hear that Ruth's father locked her in the old garden ice house as a childhood punishment: no wonder her friend shelters in make believe. The revelation of that primitive cruelty cements a friendship in which protection plays no small part. Years later, middle aged, they remain close friends and live on the same street. So when Daisy's husband dies suddenly, Ruth's discovery that the marriage was unhappy is the first stage in the unravelling of the certainties she has wrapped around her adult life.

Friendship, love, marriage and above all, the scorching effects of adultery, come under the microscope in this dextrous novel. Journeying from a terrifying suburban household to its unexpected conclusion in the Egyptian Pharaoh's tombs, The Ice House is startling, tragic and humorous by turns.