A literary gothic coming-of-age tale with hints to the supernatural and a devastating first love.

• Originality factor: ★★★★★
• Psychological factor: ★★★★★
• Coming-of-age factor: ★★★★★
• Emotionally charged: ★★★★★
• Literary factor: ★★★★★
• Gothic factor: ★★★★☆
• Eighties nostalgia: ★★★★★

Wasps in the Ice Cream is a literary gothic coming-of-age story that is about first love, heartbreak, and the mysteries surrounding growing up in a small town with small-minded people in the eighties. It does feel like a Shirley Jackson novel, but full with eighties nostalgia and (literary) horror references. 

It consists of 282 pages.

Plot

It’s the summer of 1987 in the small town where Mark Prewitt has lived his whole life. He’s friends with Kevin, a very destructive boy and Eric. He’s got two summer jobs, to fix the old car he’s bought from his grandmother. One at the ice cream shop, where a wasps nest causes many wasps to feed from and drown in the ice cream, and one at the auto shop.

There’s an old house where the strange Farrow family lives. The Farrows hate the villagers and the villagers hate the Farrows who used to be the richest family in town. Now that they have lost their oldest daughter, that fragile relationship between the Farrows and the villagers has gotten even worse, for the Farrows accuse the villagers to be responsible for her death.

Mark is about to find out how hateful this relationship is, when he meets George, the middle sister. He’s intrigued by her and they start secretly seeing each other. She’s different from any other girl he’s dated. She’s mysterious, practices witchcraft, is smart, but also full of anger and sadness. But their relationship is fragile too. They can’t be seen by anyone. Because no one will understand or condone it, not even George’s two sisters, Claudia and Tilly. While George tries to protect her family with witchcraft, Mark falls hard for her with terrible consequences. This summer will turn Mark’s life upside down, for the good and the bad.

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Short Review

The story is told by an older Mark. He reminisces that summer in 1987, his first love George, his relationship with his father after his mother died, his relationship with his much younger stepmother and his best friends. It’s a coming-of-age story about the summer that changed it all. Where he left his childhood and his boyish antics behind, faced the consequences of his actions and started to understand that other people have feelings too by trying to understand them. In the process he learns a lot about himself too. 

The story feels like a modern Romeo and Juliet tale without the unnecessary dying, but with one family against a whole village. It also does feel like a story Shirley Jackson could have written. How the story is told and written feels a bit like Merricat, but seen from the point of view from one of the villagers who falls in love with her. George feels like an eighties Merricat, alone, angry, trying to protect her family.

Although their relationship is sincere, it’s fragile, not just because of the town they live in, George’s eccentric parents who are abusive, but it’s also about Mark’s past that stands between George and him. Still their blooming love they have to keep secret is sweet, mysterious, scary and exciting. 

It’s a love story that sucks you in, with great characters, a great storyteller, who doesn’t dwell on the past, but tries to understand his actions. It also hints to the supernatural, where the ghost of Liesl, the deceased fourth sister still haunts the old Farrow house, but also haunts Mark. This haunting appears to be real, but it is also a metaphor of Mark’s actions. 

There are more metaphors throughout this book that symbolize the relationships between Mark and George, his friends and family and between the Farrows and the villagers. Once Mark makes contact with George he has poked the wasps nest, if he had left it alone, the whole summer would have been different.