Pink Ice Creams by Jo Woolaston
Intent
on fixing her broken marriage and the alcohol-fuelled catastrophe
that is her life, Kay Harris arrives at her grim and grey holiday
let, ready to lay to rest the tragedy that has governed her entire
adulthood – the disappearance of her little brother, Adam.
But
the road to recovery is pitted with the pot-holes of her own poor
choices, and it isn’t long before Kay is forced to accept that
maybe she doesn’t deserve the retribution she seeks. Will the
intervention of strangers help her find the answers she needs to move
on from her past, or will she always be stuck on the hard shoulder
with no clear view ahead and a glove box full of empties?
Pink
Ice Creams is a tale of loss, self-destruction, and clinging on to
the scraps of the long-lost when everyone else has given up hope.
To
swear or not to swear?
That’s
the effing question.
It wasn’t until I needed to
find a number of substantially sized extracts from my novel that
would sit on somebody else’s blog that I suddenly felt a
responsibility for what I had written. Pink Ice Creams is a bit
sweary, and yes that might alienate some readers, but they’re just
words –aren’t they? Nobody is actually going to be offended,
surely. This is literature, this is reported speech, this is life.
Yet, not knowing personally the person behind each blog and their own
audience I wondered if my (or more accurately – if my characters’)
choice of words would be censored? I hope not, and I am yet to find
out if my i o u’s get replaced with * # …’s whilst in another’s
care but I feel I need to say something about it. But what. Sorry?
Nah, because I’m not. Suck it up? No, not that either. Just…
don’t be such a Melonhead.
I love swear words. I love the
staccato of the vehemently spat out sounds, I love the way the words
pop out of the page and poke you in the eye, I love their comedy
value and their history, and considering that I um and ah over nearly
every word I drop onto the page I feel I know when it’s right, when
it fits, and that no other word in that moment will do the f*ck#ng
job! If you don’t feel the same way, then I guess I’m not the
writer for you, but I sincerely hope that you don’t let a silly
thing like a string of letters in a certain formation get in the way
of a bloody good read. It’s not about the language, it’s about
painting a picture. You wouldn’t replace scarlet with grey, or
marker pen with crayon just to avoid upset,
because then the
essence of the picture and its message will be lost.
And I want you to feel
uncomfortable at times, the subject matter demands it – a long
missing almost forgotten child, a woman dragging herself through a
pained life – these are not easy subjects and the language is
chosen carefully to reflect the world in which Kay lives. She invites
you to dislike her, to dismiss her, to find her company unpalatable –
this is everything she expects of you and if you play along you fit
perfectly into the mould of most who surround her and give her the
excuse she needs to continue her wretched downfall. Your judgment
becomes part of her destruction, her collapse. She has pulled you in
and turned you into Melonhead – the little miss perfect she meets
working at the caravan park who dismisses Kay as nothing more than a
skank and a waste of space. If she endeavoured to get to know the
drunken wreck in front of her instead, she could be instrumental in
turning her fortunes around, setting her on the path to salvation.
Wouldn’t that be kinder?
Use of (in)appropriate
language stabilises a reader – you know where you are. This isn’t
a cozy romance on the Norfolk Broads, this isn’t a light read under
a sun-dappled canopy – Pink Ice Creams is spat out staccato, it is
comedy and history, it is a character popping out of the page and
poking you in the eye, challenging you to adjust your lens, your
perspectives, and your boundaries, and that will be a far more
interesting journey for a reader than being a judgemental Melonhead,
I swear.
Jo
Woolaston lives in Leicestershire, England with her extreme
noise-making husband and two lovely sons. She tries to avoid
housework and getting a ‘proper job’ by just writing stuff
instead - silly verse, screenplays, shopping lists...
This
sometimes works in her favour (she did well in her MA in TV
Scriptwriting, gaining a Best Student award in Media and Journalism –
and has had a few plays produced - that kind of thing) but mostly it
just results in chronic insomnia and desperate tears of frustration.
Pink Ice Creams is her first novel, she hopes you liked it.
