BOOKS: Wasp Sex '73

A novel describes Cheeverland in the era of Naugahyde

The purveyors of popular culture have turned the 1970s into the decade of the moment. Fashion has reprised platform shoes, Pumas and bell-bottoms. Movies, TV shows and magazines marketed to the children of those taste-free years revel in their endless allusions to the Bradys and the Partridges.

More than any one character, it is the decade of the '70s itself that serves as the focus of Rick Moody's deft second novel, The Ice Storm (Little, Brown; 279 pages; $19.95). The story of the Hood family is set in 1973, by which time, as Moody writes, "the Summer of Love had migrated,...

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