Book Review #71: The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman

Hello Dear Reader!

I’ve got a really long, roughly 500-paged, traditionally published book for you this week! It’s definitely very different from the usual books I read, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t the romance I was expecting. That’s probably what I get for not reading the back-cover summary! Still, this book was a fun read full of heartache, humor, and a rags to riches story of a fictional Russian immigrant as she rises through society to become the Ice Cream Queen of America.

But before I get into that, here's the back-cover summary (from Goodreads):

In 1913, little Malka Treynovsky flees Russia with her family. Bedazzled by tales of gold and movie stardom, she tricks them into buying tickets for America. Yet no sooner do they land on the squalid Lower East Side of Manhattan, than Malka is crippled and abandoned in the street.

Taken in by a tough-loving Italian ices peddler, she manages to survive through cunning and inventiveness. As she learns the secrets of his trade, she begins to shape her own destiny. She falls in love with a gorgeous, illiterate radical named Albert, and they set off across America in an ice cream truck. Slowly, she transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, "The Ice Cream Queen" -- doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises and a celebrated television personality.

Lillian's rise to fame and fortune spans seventy years and is inextricably linked to the course of American history itself, from Prohibition to the disco days of Studio 54. Yet Lillian Dunkle is nothing like the whimsical motherly persona she crafts for herself in the media. Conniving, profane, and irreverent, she is a supremely complex woman who prefers a good stiff drink to an ice cream cone. And when her past begins to catch up with her, everything she has spent her life building is at stake.

Time for the review!

I’d like to start by saying this book has a ton in it. Divided into three parts, it covers the beginning, middle, and “end” of Malka’s life. From starting a life in America as a child immigrant to living a life full of scandals as an old woman, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street covers all of it from her point of view. She tells her story the way she remembers it while incorporating some quick and interesting facts of ice cream history.

The book is Malka’s story, showing how the events she’s experienced since childhood had shaped her all the way into her older years. She starts out an innocent child, wanting the love and validation from her parents. Though she wasn’t the prettiest of her sisters, she was the cleverest, doing her part as a child to earn income so their family could survive. But, after getting into an accident after being kicked by a horse and getting abandoned by her family, she began losing that innocence and stopped using her cleverness for the good of her family.

This book is full of the good and the bad, the happy times and the trials and tribulations that shaped Malka Treynovsky into Lillian Dunkle. I found her character growth to be interesting, as she turns into a person who isn’t the most likeable. Though she has a lot of spunk, determination, and courage as she grows, all times that she’d been manipulated and used by people she trusted made her become more selfish in a way as well as untrusting. I felt as though her heart was in the right place for the most part, but the way she went about fulfilling her wishes could’ve been done through much better means. She becomes almost obsessed with her business at the expense of those she cares about, and it’s not until late into her life that she realizes this.

I very much enjoyed reading about Malka’s story, and I loved getting to know her as a character. She’s complex and full of depth, and she was easily my favorite part of the book. I personally have nothing critical to say about the story, but I can see how others may extremely dislike her and find her stereotypical in some ways. There are also some uses of racial slurs, though rare, used throughout the book, so if that’s not your cup of tea, that may be something to keep in mind.

So, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street rating:

5/5 and recommend if you like books spanning the entire life of a character. It’s a long one at 500 pages!

Thanks for reading!