Review: Ice
Ice by Anna KavanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I cannot bear to give a resounding 5-star rating to a book that made me so acutely unhappy and uncomfortable.
Ice is a searing novel in the slipstream genre, at that interface between fantasy, science fiction, and literary fiction. It is told from a first-person perspective by an unreliable male narrator struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter in which ice is overtaking the planet. The narrator is obsessed with a thin, nameless woman called a "girl," who is described by him largely in terms of her being a victim who continually suffers further victimization. With her shimmering white-blond hair and fragile features, the narrator becomes obsessed with her and he imagines both rescuing her but also seemingly furthering her abuse, which has an overtly sexual tone. It is obvious to the reader that his prior interest her was spurned and yet he doggedly persists, telling himself that he will safeguard her.
Like a fever dream of humanity's horrors, the reader aware of Anna Kavan's (pen name) own troubled history wonders whether this nameless (thus, objectified) woman, who seems rather like a sex-toy bargaining chip, represents a painful facet of the writer's own life. The narrator's dreams or hallucinations revolve around scenarios in which he attempts (always unsuccessfully) to rescue the woman from horrifying circumstances, having an eerie effect. He cannot view her existence other than through the filter of her suffering and his being her savior, except he can never manage to save her. When they finally interact, their manner with one another is so different from the man's imaginings as to make you think him quite unbalanced, obsessive and stalker-like. His sense of entitlement to her is part of what captures my interest though, as something very much part of our present-day real world where men still feel entitled to a woman or her body. Meanwhile, her lack of aegis, her powerlessness to resist one man or another, to the very end of the world, is heartbreaking. It is all, if you'll forgive the comment, chilling.
Not a book I could recommend lightly, readers.
How about Dune? I'm getting to reread that one myself.
ReplyDeleteSo Dune might be an option for September. Also in the running for September is Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and William Gibson's Neuromancer. I alternate literary classics with sci-fi/fantasy classics and August is literary. Looks like The Woman in White is winning so far.
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