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Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains
Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains is a novel by English author Susan Elderkin published by Fourth Estate. It won a Betty Trask Award in 2000[1] and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction.[2] The novel has been published in nine countries[3] (it is called Arizona Ice Cream in France).[4] InspirationIn an interview with amazon.co.uk she reveals she began writing about a fat man doing yoga in the desert whilst studying on the UEA Creative Writing Course and then spent time herself living in the Arizona desert near Tucson.[5] In writing it Elderkin drew on her own experiences having worked as an ice-cream seller and taught English at the same shoe factory featuring in the novel.[6] Plot introductionThe story has three narrative voices: Theobald Moon, 34 and overweight, who on the death of his mother sold the house they shared in Clapham, South London and emigrated to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, his story begins with his arrival, settling in an isolated mobile-home and his wonder at his surroundings. Jo, Theo's daughter whom he calls Jelly-O; she loves her father and helps him in his business of making ice-cream, but as she grows up starts to ask questions about her mother. She finds a stack of shoe boxes in a cupboard which her father will not discuss. Eva Ligocká who works in a Bata shoe factory in Partizánske,[7] Slovakia but then falls in love with Tibor, an itinerant Ice cream van man. Eventually they escape to the West. ReceptionReviews were mixed though generally positive:
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External linksInformation related to Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains |
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