THE ICE PEOPLE BY MAGGIE GEE

Readers' Notes for The Ice People by Maggie Gee

Who wrote this piece?

Maggie Gee was born in Poole, Dorset on the South Coast of England in 1948. She studied at Oxford University and her first novel Dying, in Other Words was published in 1981.  For her eighth novel The White Family (2002), about family love and racial hatred in suburban London, she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Maggie Gee's curiosity about the world around her, and her concern about what we are doing to that beautiful world, shines through all her writing.  While her novels usually feature strong and complex relationships between men and women, some like this one, The Ice People (1998) and The Flood (2004) are set against a dark world of global warming in the not far distant future. Nature runs havoc with rising water levels or plunging temperatures, and social breakdown follows.

Maggie Gee lives in London and is the first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature.

Author photo: © Metro Publishing Ltd

Click here for more biographical details of Maggie Gee and a full bibliography.

What is the piece and what is it about?

The Ice People is a novel, which was published in 1998. It's set in the near future, in the middle of the 21st century, and envisages the European ice age that will follow a few decades of heat from global warming. ('The Ice People' is the name given to the climate migrants from Europe by the people in the Southern Hemisphere who fear they will be over-run and want to keep the northeners out.)

It's a world where men's and women's lives have diverged so far that they hardly manage to live together, where sperm counts and the birth rate have fallen dramatically and where the development of child-like robot companions pushes technology into ghastly forms of mutation: 'The nightmare end of our technodreams. Shimmering, stinking, sucking us down.  We knew so much, understood so little.'

The story is narrated by Saul, who in flashbacks tells the story of his love for Sarah, who he marries and adores and usually disagrees with. Sarah increasingly has a separatist agenda for women and while Saul is technically accomplished (he is a nanotechnologist working on artificial intelligence) he fails to spot the signs of her discontent with their relationship and with the traditional roles he is happy with. We gather that he is telling this story to stave off some terrible fate, and also as a sort of revisiting of his love for and failure to understand Sarah.  

What kind of read is it?

The story starts in archaic epic style and gives a few clues about the times it is being written in and the people who will consume it:
'I, Saul, Teller of Tales, Keeper of Doves, Slayer of Wolves, shall tell the story of my times…Of the new white world that has come upon us.  For whoever will read it.  For whoever can read.' So we get a sense that it’s a sort of dark age, and that it’s frozen.  It becomes clear that the savage tribe of boys who are Saul’s immediate potential audience have no respect for their elders and are hungry.'But perhaps my story will keep me alive. Perhaps they will let me finish my story.'

Saul has evidently lived in a very different world to this one of anarchy and bitter cold at an abandoned airport.  Recording his story removes him from this hostile environment.  'Let's hear how the old world turned into this.'  And the momentum for the novel is generated. It's Saul's story, and goes back to his youth in the early 21st century with the incredible contrast of when the earth was too hot, even in once temperate London. But the heat is exhilarating to the young: 'I loved fiery middays and baking afternoons.' Maggie Gee writes vividly about these climatic extremes, so that sweating heat and freezing cold are strong lasting impressions of The Ice People.

Saul meets Sarah, who looks tantalisingly fresh and old-fashioned, and they fall in love. They defy mid-21st century social norms and live together as husband and wife, but when they finally have a son, Luke after nine years, Sarah gravitates towards a women’s collective called 'The Children's Commune', and then 'Wicca' which becomes a sinister political force from a once 'wacky female nature-worship' cult.   

The breakdown of relationships between men and women, and between Saul and Sarah is a key element of the book: 'But now I was one of them, the moaners, the loners, the men who felt women had soured the world.'

And then the ice is coming. 'Twenty years seemed like quite a long time at first. To organise ourselves. To prepare for the ice.’ But the scientists’ ‘ideas required co-operation between governments that hardly existed…We began to see that life would get rough.'

The last third of the novel is a hazardous chase south across Europe to try to get to Africa before the borders are closed against ‘The Ice People’ from the frozen north.

When we’ve read it, how could we structure our discussion?

• Are you convinced by the world Maggie Gee has created?
• Does it frighten you?  What elements of this future do you recognise from your own life now?
• Saul is the narrator of the story.  Do you find him sympathetic?  Do you understand from him what Sarah is thinking and feeling? (When he often doesn’t understand her himself...)
• Saul tells the story partly to stay alive and partly, we imagine, to understand his past better.  Do you think he gains insight into himself or others from the act of telling the story?
• How do you think Sarah would describe Saul?
• Do you think Saul and Sarah are selfish as parents? Do you see Saul’s ‘stealing’ of their son Luke as equivalent to Sarah’s withdrawal with Luke to the women’s collective?
• Can you understand why Luke wants his freedom?
• Have you read any other novels about climate change? If so, how does this one compare?
• Does writing about the future have built-in obsolescence?/or Is writing about the future in danger of seeming out of date quickly?

Reading group tips
1)You may find that your opinions about the characters divide strongly along lines of gender or parenthood. If this is the case, you will need to ensure that each member of the group is given space to express their opinions clearly in the discussion. Come back to the piece of writing to help the group maintain objectivity if things get too personal.
2) If not many in the group have read other novels about climate change, and as a group you have found this novel interesting, you could hear recommendations from those who have and use it as an opportunity to choose another book for the group to read and discuss.

If we enjoyed this, what other writing might appeal to us?

Try another novel by Maggie Gee. The Flood (2004) has some similarities, in that it’s set in London with water levels rising.  Or for something different, her recent novel is My Cleaner (2005), in which a London writing teacher asks her former cleaner to return from Uganda and help look after her depressed son. Click here for all Maggie Gee's books listed on the encompass website.

Or for a contrast with some writing from the 1960s, two early novels of science fiction writer J. G. Ballard are The Drowned World (1962) and The Drought (1965), climate extreme counterparts. Click here for a list of books by J. G. Ballard on the encompass website.
Click here for biographical details of J. G. Ballard.

Click here for a brief quiz on writing about climate change.