Lee
”My ideas were confused. In a peculiar way, the unreality of the outer world appeared to be an extension of my own disturbed state of mind.”
Published during the Cold War, by a troubled author who struggled with mental illness, suicide, and a heroin addiction, Anna Kavan’s Ice is a hauntingly intriguing book filled with both dread and fantasy. In hindsight, I'm sure many scholars are eager to attach climate change attributes to it given the icy nuclear winter plot, but I feel like it was far more evocative of an allegory for addiction. An unreliable, unnamed male narrator on the hunt for the elusive “glass girl” could be seen as a junkie in search for their next fix, or even an obsessive abuser on the prowl for his next victim of sexual desire. Not to discount the ecological aspect, but I don't know if those were Kavan’s intentions or just a positive predictive by-product of her somewhat ethereal setting—one where the ice shelves of the arctic are expanding and freezing the world. One could also arguably throw in some Lolita-esque parallels with some characters and their possessive ideas, as I hinted a bit on earlier. I'm confident each reader will have a different perspective by the end of the book.
Kavan’s writing leaves a lot of room for interpretation, just as Ice leaves a heavy fog of ambiguity in each chapter, callous in never holding the reader’s hand. She doesn't even name any of the characters, and the non-linear plot chug along without any context to the page that you just finished right before—at times the story felt like you just joined in on a conversation that two people are having yet they speak without naming any specifics. This book is under 200 pages, but it's dense and intricate in its frigidness to the point it feels like you're really struggling to follow along. I consider myself a veteran reader and so-called critical thinker, and I must admit to having to stop and really digest what I just read every once in a while. It helps that I read this during a harsh winter storm, thus having the mood-appropriate backdrop to dig deep in reflective thought. It's a somber and grim tale, but one I was just oddly captivated by. That said, I do not think this book is for every reader; if you enjoy Ernst Jünger’s under-read On the Marble Cliffs, or the likes of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, you might want to give it a go.
”My ideas were confused. In a peculiar way, the unreality of the outer world appeared to be an extension of my own disturbed state of mind.”
Published during the Cold War, by a troubled author who struggled with mental illness, suicide, and a heroin addiction, Anna Kavan’s Ice is a hauntingly intriguing book filled with both dread and fantasy. In hindsight, I'm sure many scholars are eager to attach climate change attributes to it given the icy nuclear winter plot, but I feel like it was far more evocative of an allegory for addiction. An unreliable, unnamed male narrator on the hunt for the elusive “glass girl” could be seen as a junkie in search for their next fix, or even an obsessive abuser on the prowl for his next victim of sexual desire. Not to discount the ecological aspect, but I don't know if those were Kavan’s intentions or just a positive predictive by-product of her somewhat ethereal setting—one where the ice shelves of the arctic are expanding and freezing the world. One could also arguably throw in some Lolita-esque parallels with some characters and their possessive ideas, as I hinted a bit on earlier. I'm confident each reader will have a different perspective by the end of the book.
Kavan’s writing leaves a lot of room for interpretation, just as Ice leaves a heavy fog of ambiguity in each chapter, callous in never holding the reader’s hand. She doesn't even name any of the characters, and the non-linear plot chug along without any context to the page that you just finished right before—at times the story felt like you just joined in on a conversation that two people are having yet they speak without naming any specifics. This book is under 200 pages, but it's dense and intricate in its frigidness to the point it feels like you're really struggling to follow along. I consider myself a veteran reader and so-called critical thinker, and I must admit to having to stop and really digest what I just read every once in a while. It helps that I read this during a harsh winter storm, thus having the mood-appropriate backdrop to dig deep in reflective thought. It's a somber and grim tale, but one I was just oddly captivated by. That said, I do not think this book is for every reader; if you enjoy Ernst Jünger’s under-read On the Marble Cliffs, or the likes of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, you might want to give it a go.