ICE CREAM

In Helen Dunmore’s exquisitely controlled collection, stories such as "Emily’s Ring" flirt with darkness while "Swimming into the Millennium" and "The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife" offer moments of spiritual illumination. The title story records a tiny moment in the life of an ultra-thin supermodel. Clara longs for a taste of ice cream at her birthday celebration in an elegant restaurant. Carole Boyd performs Clara’s ambivalence, her desire for the forbidden confection, and, ultimately, her delicious surrender, with humor and honesty. Her work in "You Stayed Awake with Me" is poignant and passionate. Boyd’s expertise reveals characters’ deeper motives by the slightest alteration in her tone. This sensuous reading by Boyd complements Helen Dunmore’s lyrical prose, with its underlying eroticism, its awareness of the hope and despair inherent in the human condition. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 04]