Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube

Posted on 09 October 2018 by Blair Braverman

A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman reclaiming her courage in the stark landscapes of the north By the time Blair Braverman was eighteen, she had left her home in California, moved to arctic Norway to learn to drive sled dogs, and found work as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska Determined to carve out a life as a tough girl a young woman who confronts danger without apology she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube brilliantly recounts Braverman s adventures in Norway and Alaska Settling into her new surroundings, Braverman was often terrified that she would lose control of her dog team and crash her sled, or be attacked by a polar bear, or get lost on the tundra Above all, she worried that, unlike the other, gutsier people alongside her, she wasn t cut out for life on the frontier But no matter how out of place she felt, one thing was clear she was hooked on the North On the brink of adulthood, Braverman was determined to prove that her fears did not define her and so she resolved to embrace the wilderness and make it her own Assured, honest, and lyrical, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube paints a powerful portrait of self reliance in the face of extraordinary circumstance Braverman endures physical exhaustion, survives being buried alive in an ice cave, and drives her dogs through a whiteout blizzard to escape crooked police Through it all, she grapples with love and violence navigating a grievous relationship with a fellow musher, and adapting to the expectations of her Norwegian neighbors as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man s land.Weaving fast paced adventure writing and ethnographic journalism with elegantly wrought reflections on identity, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of Braverman s journey to self discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving Best Read [ Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube ] Author [ Blair Braverman ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr A completely engaging memoir about Braverman s experiences finding her true north in her young life I loved how vivid the Alaskan and Norwegian settings became and I love how full of character the people she interacted with were.More than this being a finding herself through adventure memoir something so rare with a lady at the helm this is very much about being one of those women who survived to tell a story about the cruelties of misogyny This is a book that deals frankly with not A completely engaging memoir about Braverman s experiences finding her true north in her young life I loved how vivid the Alaskan and Norwegian settings became and I love how full of character the people she interacted with were.More than this being a finding herself through adventure memoir something so rare with a lady at the helm this is very much about being one of those women who survived to tell a story about the cruelties of misogyny This...Do you enjoy reading about one young woman s self absorbed journey towards adulthood when you would rather be reading about her time in Alaska and Norway Then this is the book for you If you re hoping for anything insightful beyond the fact that women, everywhere, are discr...I didn t read any of the reviews of this book until I finished it I loved this book and if you want one that features fewer men and their feelings, goddamn write it yourself This is Braverman s story and she told it the way she wanted to.I wanted to love this book, but in the end I would have been happiest reading the first chapter and the afterword which was by far the most interesting chapter in the whole book.For a book hailed as a feminist frontier memoir there sure we re a lot of men and their experiences and feelings This book wouldn t even come close to passing the bechdal test In fact really the whole thing is about all the men in the author s life past and present and their feelings, none of which felt relevant or I wanted to love this book, but in the end I would have been happiest reading the first chapter and the afterword which was by far the most interesting chapter in the whole ...You just have to love a book with such a cool title Here s a young Jewish girl from California who is so drawn to cold places that at 18, instead of going to college, she heads off to Northern Norway to attend dog sledding school And she loves it She loves being freezing cold and constantly in survival mode She eventually goes home and attends college in Maine but summers in Alaska where she works on a glacier giving dogsled tours to tourists Her living and working conditions are deplorab You just have to ...Slightly outside of my usual wheelhouse, this ARC is a memoir I met the author at the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association Author Social last week, and she was awesome Also it s a great title.It s about dog sledding and growing up and, it must be said, the horrible thing that men do to girls and women But it s mostly a story about loving something, and not letting go of it, no matter what the world d...This is a somewhat strange, but very well written and edited memoir of an unusual young woman with a fascination of the North The strangeness mostly comes from Blair s disassociative style, and the dry observation tone that seems to be a Scandinavian trait as the tone felt similar to the Swedish memoir The Fly Trap There is a subdued emotional intensity throughout, and frankly I teared up about half a dozen different times toward the end for various reasons As a father of daughters, some part This is a somewhat strange, but very well written and edited memoir of an unusual young woman with a fascination of the North The strangeness mostly comes from Blair s disassociative sty...I think I m too much of a wuss to give this two stars I have to think about it I agree with the reviewers who were disappointed that it hadto do with her feelings about the men in her life for the most part they were horrendous than about life in the north and dog sledding As someone who...Love the north Want to comfortably experience it from afar This excellent first book is an account of an achingly young person growing into the realities of young womanhood in all its nuanced harshness, set in situations even harsher wrestling hungry dogs, negotiating the social hierarchies of frost bitten mushers and stoic Norwegians The story is as gentle as a sled ride over rough terrain, but with pitch perfect dialogue and crisp, unflinching portraits of difficult people and difficult p Love the north Want to comfortably experience it from afar This excellent first book is an account of an achingly young person growing into the realities of young...This is an interesting and well written memoir, but I don t understand why some memoirists can t just stick to the point If I read a memoir about a girl from California moving to the Norwegian and Alaskan Arctic, it s because I want to know what made her do that ...

09 October 2018

Blair Braverman