A strange confection
‘ Do you know anyone who doesn’t like ice cream? Who doesn’t feel happy at the sight of an ice- cream parlour?” Who indeed? So it was with great expectations that I took Ernest Van der Kwast’s The Ice- Cream Makers home for a ( hopefully) sweet summer read. According to one review, printed on the cover, it would be “a delightfully quirky and sensual exploration of life two greatest pleasures: ice- cream and poetry”.
I enjoy both, especially ice cream, and the tantalising taste of some culinary history thrown in for good measure was too much to resist. But I wouldn’t exactly say the story is delightfully quirky; it puts a slightly different twist on the theme of the sins — or, in this case, the career choices — of the fathers being visited on the sons, partly by setting it in a small Italian village and Rotterdam in the southern Netherlands.
There are moments when it is sensual and evocative, and early chapters — propelled by historical background to the story — were promising, but it got ponderous when Giovanni Talamini decided to break with family tradition and pursue a literary career.
His decision shocks his family, especially younger brother Luca who is so irked he more or less stops speaking to Giovanni. We hear about Giovanni’s travels, the guilt he feels when he returns “home” to his family’s ice- cream parlour, the poets he meets, the struggles of working in service to the arts — and we hear about them some more. It’s kind of poignant but, well, a bit vanilla.
And then, just over halfway through, Luca requests a favour of Giovanni that is so unexpected, it’s like mixing dark chocolate with smoked salmon to create sorbet ( I’ve had that combination and it doesn’t work).
Van der Kwast wants to explore the family ties that bind and what is asked of us in the interests of serving our families. He’s worked hard to try to set up an intriguing and thought- provoking premise, but it comes too late and, when it does, is incongruous and leaves a strange taste. It simply doesn’t ring true nor do the actions of the characters once this request is made.
To his credit, Van der Kwast wraps up storylines from earlier in the book in a satisfying way, but I wouldn’t exactly say I savoured the book.