Have You Read This? Wasps in the Ice Cream by Tim McGregor

 

Many people who study horror as a literary genre will often ask what makes a particular work of fiction a horror book? As told by Wikipedia, literary historian J. A. Cudon says that horror is a genre that “shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing.” In other words, horror is more than scares that gets the heart racing. Sometimes, horror is quiet, as slow-acting as a poison, not shocking the heart, but leaving it sick. Such is the case with Tim McGregor’s novella Wasps in the Ice Cream.

It’s Summer 1987, and young Mark Prewitt plans on spending the summer goofing off with his friends. Unfortunately, he and his friends harass the Farrow girls, whose family are the town’s pariahs. Feeling guilty, Mark strikes up a friendship with Farrow sister Georgia, one that threatens to become something more. Mark soon leads a double life, hiding his relationship with Georgia from the town while getting pulled deeper into the Farrow’s world of witchcraft and speaking with the dead. The summer will end with Mark forced to choose between his friends and the fascinating Farrows, as well as how dark the human heart can get.

An elevator pitch for this book would be “Shirley Jackson writes a pitch for The Wonder Years but set in the decade of Stranger Things,” but such a pitch might be reductive for what McGregor has really done with this coming-of-age story. Even the book’s title, referencing Mark’s job, can be symbolic of something dangerous hidden in something sweet, and such symbolism could describe Mark’s relationship with Georgia, Mark’s relationship with his friends, or just Mark’s idealism crashing headlong into reality. Even the book’s supernatural elements take a backseat to McGregor’s stellar character development, particularly with Mark and Georgia, the two characters McGregor pushes the farthest from tropes that have been explored in other books. Georgia is more than just a witch trope, and Mark is a likable enough protagonist but has a graveyard full of secrets.

The story focuses on Mark, but both he and Georgia have an air of tragedy about them. Theirs is a relationship that readers will want to see succeed despite the multitude of hurdles placed before them. Instead of syrupy, afterschool-special sweetness, McGregor opts for something more bittersweet, which many would argue is closer to an authentic portrayal of adolescent love.