Icy Sparks

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Icy Sparks
Author	Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novels
Publisher	Viking Press, Penguin Books
Publication date	1998
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	320 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-670-87311-X (first edition, hardback)

Icy Sparks is a novel by Gwyn Hyman Rubio, and was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club Selection.

1 Plot introduction
2 Plot summary
3 Characters in "Icy Sparks"
4 Trivia
5 Awards and nominations

[edit] Plot introduction

A young girl struggling with accusations of mental illness lives in Eastern Kentucky in 1956.

[edit] Plot summary

Icy Sparks is a young girl living in midwestern America with her grandparents in the 1950s/1960s. She doesn't get along well with her peers and suddenly starts having tics and croaks. Icy goes down into the root cellar to hide these urges from her grandparents and finally tells her friend, Miss Emily Tanner, a local store owner who is also an outcast from society at 300 pounds. Her teacher tries putting her in a solitary classroom but even that doesn't work and her grandparents have Icy admitted to a mental institution for observation. Even in the institution, Icy is an outcast. She sees herself as not as mentally ill as her peers there and is being tormented by one of the hospital workers. She befriends a second worker but really just wants to go home. She is allowed to go home after a while but stays mainly in the house or on the surrounding property, but not in public. After her return home, the atmosphere is tense even there and after her grandfather dies, Icy and her grandmother turn to religion for solace.

[edit] Characters in "Icy Sparks"

Icy Sparks – a young girl, protagonist
Miss Emily Tanner – a local store owner and friend
Mrs.Stilton: antagonist/4th grade teacher the bomb

[edit] Trivia

The book is written in the first person and has an epilogue written while Icy is ostensibly 21 years old looking back on the events of the book in the light of her diagnosis. During this epilogue she uses the expression "Computer Overload", which might seem to be somewhat anachronistic. In an otherwise credible and personal account of poignant events this spoils an otherwise well crafted narrative experience right at the last minute.