3.5 stars.

Helen Humphreys writes,

This book is intended as a long meditation on the nature of ice. Each story is a story of transformation, as ice itself is the result of a transformative process. Because of climate change, brought on by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we are in danger of losing ice from our world. If ice disappeared, we would not only lose the thing itself and its stabilizing place in the balance of nature, but we would also lose the idea of ice from our consciousness, and all the ways we are able to imagine it."

The book consists of a series of short vignettes, just a few pages long, or considering the pocket size of the book itself, just a few paragraphs long. The stories begin in 1142 and end in 1927, and feature the forty times in history that the great River Thames of England froze. Humphreys uses a variety of voices and viewpoints. Some stories include details about the historic events of that period (e.g. the Black Death). Others describe the inner thoughts or the everyday lives of ordinary Englishmen and women.

However, throughout the book, the major theme is the Thames, and how, almost each time the river froze, the people of England struggled to adapt. At freezing, the anchored ships or those in mid-sail along the river were held fast in one position, and the people inside were stuck. Sometimes, the ice was smooth and hard and clear. In those years, a Frost Fair was built on the iced river, with music, horse races, fox hunting, and other entertainment. But in other years, simply walking across was a perilous journey because of the nature of the ice and the manner in which it froze. And thawing was never gentle.

Above all, the people were reminded that the frozen Thames is not something they can control: "...The river is a wild thing and this cannot be forgotten because, if it is, the Thames will simply arch its back and throw anything off that tries to tame it."