The Country of Ice Cream Star Audiobook

Quotes

• “What an astonishing achievement…I can’t remember when I last read something so original or sophisticated or emotionally engaging or so breathtakingly ambitious.”

  — Kate Atkinson, New York Times bestselling author

• “The Country of Ice Cream Star is in many ways a classic story, craftily retold and made contemporary…[It] gradually builds toward a powerful, horrifying, and beautifully written climax, one that’s epic in scope but also feels intensely personal. It’s possible that this intrepid girl is the Frodo Baggins our times deserve.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “Sandra Newman’s novel The Country of Ice Cream Star makes the Hunger Games seem wimpy.”

  — Wall Street Journal

• “Probably the next Divergent…The unique dialogue (there’s no adults to teach them proper English, after all) and quick pacing make it an engrossing, thrilling read.”

  — Self

• “Haunting and heartbreaking…This is an epic about love and hope that will inspire—and probably be screening at a movie theater near you in the next few years.”

  — Vanity Fair

• “A treat, full of supple metaphors and rhythmic lyricism…This is an obvious candidate for Hunger Games–hungry Hollywood to pluck out the linguistic heart that makes it special. Take a look before that happens.”

  — Daily Telegraph (London)

• “A brave new/old world that delivers on multiple levels, especially Ice Cream Star’s alluring language.”

  — Observer (London)

• “[The novel’s voice is] a remarkable creation, an approximation of an English whose evolution failed to be nurtured past adolescence and then ossified with new rules and structure in place.”

  — A.V. Club

• “Stylish and accomplished.”

  — Independent on Sunday (London)

• “As inventive as it is captivating.”

  — Independent (London)

• “Newman’s novel is ambitious, taking on race, sex, class, religion, politics, and war all at once. What sets the work apart is its unapologetic narrator, whose fantastically unbridled, wholly teenage point of view renders each page a pleasure to read.”

  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “A richly detailed dystopian epic…This suspenseful, provocative tale is The Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies and The Walking Dead, only much, much better.”

  — Booklist (starred review)

• “Narrator Lisa Renee Pitts narrates this post-apocalyptic novel with feeling…Listeners who can move past the dialect will find the story of children surviving at world’s end engaging as Pitts’s melodic voice, full of warm undertones, brings them closer to the emotional core of Ice Cream Star’s struggle for survival.”

  — AudioFile

• “This literary dystopia inhabits a fully imagined, remarkably inventive universe with its own bizarre rituals and language…The patient reader will be intrigued by the poetic prose and captivated by the exploits of Ice Cream Star.”

  — Library Journal

• “A bold, linguistically adventurous dystopia…A singular work of storytelling that manages to be historically and politically compelling in its view of a future haunted by disease and death. Yet Newman manages to imbue her heroine with a hope and resiliency that will surpass the ravages of a woebegone time.”

  — Shelf Awareness

• “Newman’s story is inventive, her characters memorable…praiseworthy for its solid efforts at world-building.”

  — Kirkus Reviews