The Ice Storm characters

Appears from the start

A Connecticut husband and father whose outwardly prosperous life conceals dissatisfaction and an affair with his neighbor Janey Carver. He wants the privileges of domestic stability and the excitement of escaping it, without fully acknowledging the cost of trying to keep both.

Appears from the start

Ben's wife and the mother of Paul and Wendy. Intelligent and increasingly alienated from the role her suburban marriage has assigned her, she recognizes more of Ben's dishonesty than he admits and begins testing boundaries of her own.

First appears in chapter 2

The Hoods' teenage son, a student away at school who is absorbed in comics, desire, and his plan to see Libbets Casey. His romantic confidence is largely imagined, and his holiday movements keep him apart from the family tensions at home.

First appears in chapter 2

Ben and Elena's young adolescent daughter. Curious, unsentimental, and alert to adult hypocrisy, she experiments with sexuality and power with the Carver boys while the parents conduct their own evasive experiments nearby.

First appears in chapter 3

The Hoods' neighbor and Ben's lover. Cool and emotionally distant, she treats the affair less as a romantic escape than as another temporary arrangement she can end when it becomes tiresome.

First appears in chapter 3

Janey's husband and the father of Mikey and Sandy. He moves through the couples' social world with the same mixture of drinking, competition, and unspoken dissatisfaction that shapes the other adults' marriages.

First appears in chapter 4

The older Carver son, a solitary adolescent fascinated by the physical world and by the ice transforming the neighborhood. He is one of Wendy's companions in the largely unsupervised space created by their parents' distractions.

First appears in chapter 4

Mikey's younger brother. More vulnerable and hesitant than the other children, he becomes involved in Wendy's attempts to imitate and investigate adult sexuality.

First appears in chapter 6

The teenage girl Paul hopes to seduce during the Thanksgiving holiday. His elaborate expectations take little account of her own uncertainty, intoxication, or interest in his friend Francis.

First appears in chapter 6

Paul's school friend and rival for Libbets's attention. More socially aggressive than Paul, he helps turn Paul's hoped-for romantic encounter into an awkward contest.

First appears in chapter 12

A neighbor in the Hoods' suburban circle and one of the adults participating in the Thanksgiving weekend's key party.

First appears in chapter 12

A guest in the same social circle whose presence at the key party helps make the couples' private discontent into a communal ritual.