The Year of Ice - Brian Malloy

Ok, so I picked The Year of Ice up purely because it was mentioned on the back of Geography Club. By saying that we all now know that it's about a teenager (male) who is dealing with discovering he is gay.
There are so many other issues packed into this book that the sexuality issue become almost buried, only to be resurected by the kid's almost constant quest to want to get laid. Let's list the issues that I can remember (POSSIBLE SPOILERS):

• Kid's mother has died a year previous to the story
• Father has started dating again
• Mother's death may have been a suicide as the father was cheating on her at the time
• Kid's best friend gets his girlfriend pregnant
• Father plans a marriage and move in with current girlfriend
• Father abandons this woman and begins to date former mistress (who may or may not have been indirectly responsible for the death of kid's mother)
• Next door neighbor keeps dead wife in a freezer becasue he didn't want to be alone
• Father marries former mistress
• Kid is gay
• Former mistress/New mother gets pregnant
• Kid worries about paying for college
• Father runs away
• Best friend's baby is put up for adoption....after abortion discussions
• New sibling is born with a birth defect, Down's Syndrome I think

By about halfway through I was making bets with Jeremy that the main character would lose his virginity to a black transvestite just so that the author could make sure he also covered racism and transgender issues. I don't remember any pets dying.

There is a really funny passage towards the beginning of the book in which the main character blames Easy Bake Ovens for relationship problems between men and women that's worth a read.

I can't say that this book was bad, but it was so packed full of issues it became comedic and lost some integrity in my mind.