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Iodine

3.24 of 5 stars 3.24 · rating details · 711 ratings · 224 reviews

Haven Kimmel, the #1 "New York Times" bestselling author, has long attracted legions of fans for her insightful, humane portraits of outsiders struggling to find their place in the world. In "Iodine," her fourth novel, Kimmel once again draws on her exceptional powers of observation and empathy, but this time she makes an exhilarating foray into psychological gothic territ...more Haven Kimmel, the #1 "New York Times" bestselling author, has long attracted legions of fans for her insightful, humane portraits of outsiders struggling to find their place in the world. In "Iodine," her fourth novel, Kimmel once again draws on her exceptional powers of observation and empathy, but this time she makes an exhilarating foray into psychological gothic territory with the electrifying story of a young woman emerging from layers of delusion, fantasy, and lies. With her astounding intelligence, fierce independence, and otherworldly lavender eyes, college senior Trace Pennington makes an indelible impression even as questions about her past and her true identity hover over every page. From her earliest years, Trace turned away from her abusive mother toward her loving father. Within the twisty logic of abuse, her desperate love for him took on a romantic cast that persists to this day, though she's had no contact with her family since she ran away from home years ago. Alone but for her beloved dog, she's eked out an impoverished but functional existence, living in an abandoned house, putting herself through college, and astonishing her teachers with her genius and erudition. What they don't know is that she leads a double life: thanks to forged documents, at school she is Ianthe Covington, a young woman with no past.

Trace's singular life is upended when she and her literature professor fall in love. She tells him nothing about her life, and as it becomes apparent that he has his own dark secrets, she's forced to face herself and her past. After recovering a horrific, long-suppressed memory, Trace finally copes with the fallout from her brutal, bizarre childhood. Kimmel parcels out Trace's strange, dark story in mesmerizing bits that obscure as much as they reveal, and keep the reader guessing until the end.

With Kimmel's radiant imagination, lyrical prose, and vision of a bleak and fertile Midwest on full display, "Iodine" is a frightening and marvelous tale of life at the outer extremes of human experience. This unique portrait of the psychological effects of trauma is tantalizing, shocking, and ultimately hopeful.(less)

Hardcover, 223 pages

Published August 5th 2008 by Free Press (first published August 1st 2008)

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Feb 13, 2012 Jeanette rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: started-it-hated-it

Sorry folks, I just cannot say anything nice about this book. Sad, since I've very much enjoyed every other Haven Kimmel book I've read.

I knew I didn't like this book after about 70 pages, but I continued on for another 70 or so pages after that, hoping this author wouldn't disappoint me and things would come together. The book just got worse and worse.

IF you are a psych major and like reading boring blather about Freud and Jung interspersed with a terrible so-called story about a psychopathic...more

7 likes · like · see review

May 06, 2008 Alexis rated it 5 of 5 stars

A real departure for Kimmel and for my money, a triumphant return. But for Orville and Solace of Leaving Early the other works of hers I have read have not drawn me in enough for me to even finish them.

But Iodine, Iodine! It is gorgeous and intense and heavy and complex and worthwhile. I feel I need to go back to school for many years to cover all that I know I missed in her discussion of archetypes- just to figure out if Ianthe's poem is any good.

But there is so much to consider. It lacks a cer...more

12 likes · like · see review

Aug 03, 2008 Anna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed-for-watermark

Trace Pennington is a senior at the top of her class at the University of the Midwest, a double major in English and classics with an intimidating quadruple minor in psychology, humanities, philosophy, and (after one more class) women’s studies. But when she came to school, she turned down the room-and-board part of her scholarship, preferring to do her studying in the run-down, unheated farmhouse where she lives with her father’s dog and two hundred unlabeled file folders. No one, not even her...more Trace Pennington is a senior at the top of her class at the University of the Midwest, a double major in English and classics with an intimidating quadruple minor in psychology, humanities, philosophy, and (after one more class) women’s studies. But when she came to school, she turned down the room-and-board part of her scholarship, preferring to do her studying in the run-down, unheated farmhouse where she lives with her father’s dog and two hundred unlabeled file folders. No one, not even her lifelong best friend, knows her address. She’s not even enrolled under her real name. What Trace is hiding from, however, she is also trapped with: herself, mental illness, memory, reality.
Kimmel’s prose, both in her memoirs (“A Girl Named Zippy”) and previous novels (“The Solace of Leaving Early”), has always been lovely; here, it reaches a chilling beauty. She handles two concurrent narratives: Trace’s revelatory jottings in a dream journal for one of her classes (the invitation-only seminar Special Topics in Archetypical Psychology) and her third-person movements through several different worlds: the rural bleakness of her childhood, the posing personae of college kids, the jargon-laced farce of academia, and always, the dark, bristling territory of dreams. The characterization is usually painful and often funny—a cover blurb compares Kimmel to Flannery O’Connor, and they do share the ability to portray people who at once hopelessly cliched and completely individual. Many of the cast of “Iodine” have, in fact, consciously turned themselves into stereotypes, both funny and heartbreaking: the overwrought transsexual, the obese, paranormal-obsessed trailer-wife, the rumpled, past-his-prime professor exiled to a third-rate university. Archetypes, after all, are just caricatures on a sublime scale. And archetypes are where this novel dwells, within the Jungian corridors of the collective unconscious, where Trace’s hallucinations (the coyote walking upright who, when she was six, put a pebble in the back of her neck and led her over the hillside to where her best friend was waiting) are every bit as real as her abusive mother and her too-beloved father. While bits and pieces of Trace’s past are revealed, as the line between author and narrator all but disappears, it’s impossible—and pointless—to tell what really happened.
Why iodine? It’s referenced only twice, once within a delusion, but as the title it’s at the back of the reader’s mind throughout: it represents, I think, the attempt to heal, imposed from without—helpful but superficial, leaving behind a stain.(less)

8 likes · like · see review

Sep 27, 2008 Glenda Bixler rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those interested in Literary Psychological Fiction

Recommended to Glenda by: Amazon Vine Program

Shelves: reviewed-books

Iodine by Haven Kimmel was a very disturbing book for me. I could not say I liked it, but I feel compelled to give it high praise for what Kimmel has created in this portrayal of her character, Trace Pennington. If you dare--enter her psychotic mind:

I never
I never had sex with my father but I would have, if he had agreed.

The majority of Iodine comes to us in the form of journals. The excerpt above is how Kimmel opens her novel. Certainly attention getting—certainly a setup of what may be coming...more

5 likes · like · see review

Aug 27, 2008 Darlene rated it 4 of 5 stars

What a strange, literary, thoughtful, intellectual, creepy, brilliant book. Kimmel is really showing her chops as a writer of literary fiction here and this is not for light readers. Discussions of Jungian archetypes sit side by side with examinations of mythology and psychological symbolism all while we watch the main character try to make sense of her daily life while sorting through her sordid past. A really captivating heroine. We're not sure what's wrong but clearly something is. What's rea...more

4 likes · like · see review

Aug 25, 2008 Marian rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was weird as hell. I don't even know if I can post a review because I'm not sure I even "got" it. It's a psychological tale with an unreliable narrator (I think). If you took philosophy, psychology, or, say, have a divinity degree, you might fare better than I. I found the hyper-specific details (such as Kate Bush lyrics) jarring juxtaposed with prose about Hekate and archetypes.

5 likes · like · see review

Nov 17, 2008 Caren rated it 2 of 5 stars

I hesitated to only give this book one star because I think it deserves better than that, so I settled on two even though I really didn't like it at all. It was very well written, and it would have been interesting to be able to dissect it with someone a lot smarter than I am who could help me make sense of it. But it was just so disturbing that when I was finished with it I really wanted to put it behind me once and for all. I didn't know what was real and what wasn't, and just didn't know what...more

3 likes · like · see review

Oct 03, 2009 Eileen Granfors rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: skip-it-awful

Okay, I read a lot of different genres and appreciate the "new" modernism in art and literature. I do not, however, suffer through interminable plotless, meandering, self-indulgent writing for the sheer joy of reading.

For more about this book, see my review on amazon.com under the title and my reviewer's name, EGranfors.

2 likes · like · see review

Sep 08, 2008 Hood rated it 5 of 5 stars

Bound August 28, 2008 Miami Sun Post

Zippy Rides Again! (Sort Of)

Haven Kimmel Pours Some Iodine on the Wounded

By John Hood

It’s been seven years since Haven Kimmel broke into the Best Book lists with her startlingly frank and outwardly funny memoir, A Girl Named Zippy. In that time there’s been a three-piece of place (the novels The Solace of Leaving Early, Something Rising [Light and Swift:] and The Used World), a second look back (She Got up off the Couch), a book for swift kids (Orville: A Dog...more

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Aug 19, 2008 Aileen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think I liked it. I basically ate it in one sitting this afternoon, breaking only when forced to change location. That means I must like it. And I have been thinking about it for the last few hours since I finished it, so I think I must really like it. And I did, though there were parts that I felt didn't read true, and a few plot points that don't exactly work with the final revelation, i think, without a heavy reliance on the idea of the unreliable narrator. (which is fine, i guess, but i do...more

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Sep 03, 2008 Tina Hayes rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone interested in psychology, Freud, Jung, or just looking for a good read

Shelves: vine

Very well-written prose kept my interest in this fascinating novel. The main character, Trace, is a college girl living in an abandoned house--the reader's first clue that she has a mental illness. Coming from a very dysfuntional family, her older sister and her best friend from childhood, Candy, are her only links to the past.

The deeper we read, the more we find clues to Trace's problems, constantly wondering if what we read is her reality or all in her mind. Although this novel is dark and so...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 27, 2008 Becky rated it 5 of 5 stars

The word "ambitious" is often applied to "big" books -- books with "big" themes, books with "big" language, "big" aspirations, and so on...none of which usually add up to much. For a reviewer to call a book "ambitious" is instantly damning, as it implies that the ambitions have not been fulfilled.

Not so with the novels of Haven Kimmel, which deal with such huge swaths of academic study, and in such depth, they could be called "ambitious." But not merely ambitious. No. Haven Kimmel delivers. She...more The word "ambitious" is often applied to "big" books -- books with "big" themes, books with "big" language, "big" aspirations, and so on...none of which usually add up to much. For a reviewer to call a book "ambitious" is instantly damning, as it implies that the ambitions have not been fulfilled.

Not so with the novels of Haven Kimmel, which deal with such huge swaths of academic study, and in such depth, they could be called "ambitious." But not merely ambitious. No. Haven Kimmel delivers. She has read, she has studied, and not only that -- mmmman, can she write.

Iodine plunges the reader into the bizarre daily life and dream journals of Trace Pennington. Trace lives in an abandoned house with her dog, Weeds, takes showers at a local truck stop, and is such an ardent academic that she has enough credits to declare multiple majors and minors. We also quickly learn that she grew up wanting to have sex with her father (who found the idea unacceptable), her mother uses her as a sort of currency, and that she receives frequent visits from all manner of wild animals, some of whom speak to her.

If that's not enough weirdness, Iodine also enters the worlds of UFO sightings and alien abductions, post-punk/New Wave music (Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" album figures prominently and very appropriately), mythology and archetype, academia and its follies, feminism, and so much more.

This book is a staggering achievement of layer upon layer upon layer of meaning. I've read it only once and have barely scratched the surface. I'm going to enjoy digging further into it on subsequent reads. It's not an easy read (see above, re "layers"), but it is gripping. Haven Kimmel has created a living, breathing, complex character in Trace Pennington and has laid bare that character's psyche for all to see. This is one of the most literate, challenging, downright terrifying books I've read in years.

Just when I think I've seen all there is to see in the world of contemporary fiction, just when I think there isn't any fresh way to explore the same old themes the human race ponders over and over again, a flash of brilliance appears. Haven Kimmel is utterly original and enormously talented.(less)

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Sep 14, 2011 Juushika rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: status-borrowed

As a child, Trace was abused by her mother and fell in love with her father; now she living as Ianthe and at the top of her class in college, but everything changes when she falls in love with her professor. As she balances her old and new lives, the reader wades through increasingly unbelievable stories and Trace comes ever closer to discovering the truth of her past. Intelligent, complex, and difficult, Iodine challenges but also rewards the reader with a confusing personal history, rich psych...more As a child, Trace was abused by her mother and fell in love with her father; now she living as Ianthe and at the top of her class in college, but everything changes when she falls in love with her professor. As she balances her old and new lives, the reader wades through increasingly unbelievable stories and Trace comes ever closer to discovering the truth of her past. Intelligent, complex, and difficult, Iodine challenges but also rewards the reader with a confusing personal history, rich psychological overtones, and a shifting, twisting plot. I enjoyed this book more and more as it went on, and I love the end product. I recommend it to any reader willing to rise to its challenge.

Trace/Ianthe lives two lives, therefore Iodine is a book of two parts: The first half of the book is dedicated to Trace, who was abused by her mother and fell in love with her father, who now lives an isolated life while she tries to keep in touch with the shreds of her childhood. After Trace falls in love, the second half of the book goes to her alias Ianthe, an gifted student who casts everything and marries her professor, only to become increasingly suspicious of his past. Trace's story is piecemeal and unbelievable, haunted by visions of animals and a friend obsessed with alien abduction, and so the first half of the book is bizarre, slow, and confusing. Ianthe's story is easier to follow and more enjoyable to read, but it reaches back to the beginning of the book to knit the story together. The novel is an ever-changing landscape, twisted by an unreliable narrator, complicated by layers of psychology and symbolism. It is a slow, thoughtful booknot suitable for casual page-turning, it requires attention and thought.

And it rewards that effort. Iodine is not perfectwould that the first half were easier to like, if not to consume; would that the twists and turns were more predictablebut it is intelligent and thought-provoking, and I found it very satisfying. There is simply so much going on: among others, a feminine Oedipal complex, the psychology of alien abduction, the symbolism of Hecate and the tripartite woman, male dominance and female objectification (which reminded me of The Story of O), the ghost of the former wife (which reminded me of Rebecca), the division between memory and imagination, sanity and insanity. It's a lot for one book to handle, and none of the topics are fully discussed; instead, each is a contributing factor, creating a character, her history, and her life. Therefore, the book opens the door to infinite thought, but it also tells the story of Trace/Ianthe. Her past is conflicting, her life is unbelievable, her narration is unreliable, but her story is real.

I found some sectionsTrace's dog, her totems and animal guides, her hopeless lovetouching and emotionally charged. I found many sectionsexplorations of psychology and psychological models in literature, fairy tales, and the protagonistincredibly thought-provoking. I found the constantly changing story both confusing and intriguing, and when I finished the book, fairly certainly I finally understood, I wanted to turn right back to the first page and begin again. I still may. So while Iodine may have benefited from more appealing content, a simpler story, and less ambitious goals, I greatly enjoyed it. The book becomes more readable, interesting, and thought-provoking as it goes on, and the final product is a gem of a novel which begs further thought and appreciation. This is an intelligent, difficult book which is well worth the effort it takes to read, and I highly recommend it to any reader ready to rise to that challenge.(less)

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Jul 07, 2011 Morrigan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008-read

Iodine is an excellent book. It delves into the muddled psyche of the main character, Trace (known by others as Ianthe) who is a brilliant college student hiding a secret. She is known to others to as Ianthe but her birth name is Trace Pennington, a girl who is hiding from the past and has created a new identity. She lives in an abandoned house with her dog, Weeds. She sustains herself with scholarship money and basically living like a homeless person. She has severed all ties with her family. S...more Iodine is an excellent book. It delves into the muddled psyche of the main character, Trace (known by others as Ianthe) who is a brilliant college student hiding a secret. She is known to others to as Ianthe but her birth name is Trace Pennington, a girl who is hiding from the past and has created a new identity. She lives in an abandoned house with her dog, Weeds. She sustains herself with scholarship money and basically living like a homeless person. She has severed all ties with her family. She only keeps in tough with her best childhood friend, Candy, who is apparently facing problems of her own.

Trace is not like everyone else. It is quickly evident that although Trace is brilliant, she is experiencing some sort of psychosis. Her break from reality is first noticeable through her dream journal which details the occurrences of her childhood, however reliable they may be. Her dream journal is a window to her psyche, a sort of navigation to her thoughts and beliefs, which are questioned at every step.

Trace/Ianthe finds love with her college professor, an older man. Through this interaction, and that of her best friend, the reality of Trace's life become a bit clearer; although, never quite certain. We never quite know what is true or not in this book. But, that is not the point of this story. Yes, by the end we are not sure about the actual events. We do not know what actually transpired; we have been exploring the mind of a person experiencing a psychotic break from reality and what we though had happened may have not. But, we do not need to know what really happened (and we never will), the idea of the book is the exploration into the mind of the main character. Her train of thought, although chaotic, is quite interesting and brilliant.

The author explores the teachings of different psychologists, such as Jung, to interpret some of thoughts going to Trace's mind. The use of psychology and the different theories, although interesting, is merely an element for the main character, Ianthe/Trace, to explain to herself the motivations and actions of others but not her own situations. Her situation is mostly explained as an exercise in free form, an exercise in literature. This is merely a book told in a stream of through manner and it is quite interesting. (less)

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Apr 19, 2010 Steph rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction

This is a book about archetypes, dreams, and psychosis. The protagonist, Trace, is a senior in college, brilliant, but very ill with a seizure disorder and dissociative disorder. The victim of an abusive, religious zealot mother, Trace's day-to-day thoughts are commonly interrupted by real and unreal scenes from her past. She keeps a wild dream journal for one of her college courses and the narrative takes frequent turns into its pages. In between, she falls in love, puts school on hold, and dre...more

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May 05, 2010 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Emily by: Newark book club

This was a very odd little book. I don't think I'm smart enough to fully grasp all the allusions and references. My psychoanalysis knowledge is very limited...I don't even think I ever took a Psych class! (Does Sociology 101 count?) Regardless, this was an interesting read. I feel like I should like it because it seems so smart but the truth is-it was over my head and I'm not even sure I know what happened in the story. Whoops.

I don't even know how to explain the plot...a young woman on the verg...more

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Jun 22, 2009 Christy rated it 2 of 5 stars

I have a hard time defining my opinion of this book. It's my first experience with Kimmel, and while I like her style (at least her style in this book), she lays it on a little too thick for me - at times it seems pretty self-indulgent, like art for art's sake. It's strangely ethereal and gritty at the same time, which is appealing.

My main complaint was voiced very well by another reviewer, Tod Goldberg. Trace, the main character in the book, is passionate about and learned in psychological stud...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Lisa Beaulieu rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is not an easy book, in either the writing nor the subject matter. The first sentence of this book starts out "I never had sex with my father but I would have, if he had agreed." I put it in the "back to the library pile" but, then, having nothing else to read and having enjoyed Kimmel's other books, pushed on past the beginning. Set in the 1980s, age of repressed memory syndrome, false memory syndrome, Satanic Ritual abuse hysteria, multiple personality disorder, and the first Whitney Stre...more This is not an easy book, in either the writing nor the subject matter. The first sentence of this book starts out "I never had sex with my father but I would have, if he had agreed." I put it in the "back to the library pile" but, then, having nothing else to read and having enjoyed Kimmel's other books, pushed on past the beginning. Set in the 1980s, age of repressed memory syndrome, false memory syndrome, Satanic Ritual abuse hysteria, multiple personality disorder, and the first Whitney Streiber book about being abducted by aliens, Iodine is a meditation on what all that might have meant or been about. It is a wild ride, and amazingly well done. Something happened to Trace in her childhood, and it is clear much of what she writes is fantasy/cover memory. Her "other personality" is Ianthe, a brilliant college student about to finish her degree. We go with Trace to meet people from her childhood, we go with Ianthe to class, and watch as she writes in her dream journal and listen in to theories of Freud, Jung, and Hillman, and archetypes, and fairytales. It is fascinating, and I couldn't put the book down. Kimmel is scathing about the victim worship of the 80s, represented by a professor who runs a women's victimization class and tries to act as the students' therapist.

After finishing the book, I was unclear still on exactly what parts were real or not, but, interested enough to find out, that I picked up a book by James Hillman, whom the author credits for inspiring her. Reading the first chapter of his book "Revisioning Psychology" I had a great big aha moment. I would not say I completely "understand" Iodine now, as it is richly layered and has multiple meanings and nuances - but reading Hillman got the ball rolling for me.

The longer I think about this book, the more I like it. It was a fun puzzle, a prose poem about the process of becoming an adult psychologically, a warning to our society about repression and projection, which leads to hysteria and witch-hunts, and probably a number of other things that haven't occured to me quite yet.

For anyone who enjoyed the book but feels a bit befuddled, I found Haven Kimmel's blog, where she has this discussion of her book.
http://havenkimmel.wordpress.com/2008...

(less)

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Apr 07, 2012 Sue rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. It kills me to say I didn't like this book, because I adore Haven Kimmel and Zippy and her quirky family and her fiction has been excellent (Something Rising, Solace). And the premise of this - whoa. I knew I was going to be blown away by the layers that revealed themselves, the twists and turns that were sure to be meted out. Plus, plus...Haven Kimmel was the reader on this audio book! YES! With my chai team my commute to work now going to be the best part of my day!

Um, no. I finished this book...more

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Dec 06, 2008 Peggy rated it 1 of 5 stars

Um, clearly I am equal parts A. Not crazy (phew!) and B. Unlearned because I could hardly follow this book at all. It, I can only suppose, captures the mind of a deeply disturbed, highly intelligent girl and I was just plugging through until before I know it, it's the end of the book, there's this crazy twist and it was over. I was just scratching my head and wondering what the heck just happened. Hated it.

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Feb 12, 2012 Laurel-Rain rated it 4 of 5 stars

Entering the dream world of our protagonist, Trace/Ianthe, is like slipping between reality and fantasy.

An abused child whose poor grip on reality is balanced, at times, by her superior intelligence, Trace Pennington reinvents herself as Ianthe Covington, and enters college. There she manages some kind of normalcy, but lives in an abandoned farmhouse with her dog Weeds, barely existing except in the academic life she seemingly relishes.

When she meets and falls in love with a professor, Jacob Mat...more

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May 16, 2012 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Oh, Haven Kimmel, you are my hero. An Indiana girl just like me, raised in the Hoosier heartland with the same distaste for the arrogance of outsiders who dare to call us provincial when they think we're out of earshot (or maybe they don't care if we're out of earshot or maybe they don't think we understand the meaning of provincial). Iodine is in the class of literary fiction that is a lot like those roads and paths in the Indiana countryside. You get to where you're going if you stay on the ma...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: miscellaneous-fiction, psychological

I find Haven Kimmel's writing to be poetic prose. It's hard to imagine someone able to choose all the exact right words to imbue psychosis with a literary quality, and yet she does it. That said, this is not my favorite book by her simply because it is so bleak and hopeless.

The main character - Tracey or Ianthe, depending on who she's talking to - is obviously a little weird. It's likely she's even quite smart but mentally unbalanced. You certainly realize quite early on that her childhood was b...more

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Feb 18, 2009 Garry Bartle rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Book: the first sentence of this book starts out "I never had sex with my father but I would have, if he had agreed." I almost turned it off then, but decided to give it a legitimate listen. After about an hour and a half, I just couldn't continue. I found the plot extremely hard to follow and there didn't seem to be much of a point to the whole thing.

I recognize that the intent was to convey the fractured mental state of the main character, but there were many instances where the author wou...more

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Feb 01, 2009 Maggie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book by complete accident--literally just picked it up off the library shelf without looking. I saw that it took place in Indiana, and being a Hoosier myself, figured I'd give it a try. This isn't the sort of book I usually read...I like things that are a little more straightforward. I found myself paging back through the book, wondering if I missed something or misread something. I decided in the end I would have to take on faith that Trace was a complete kook which is apparently en...more

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Jul 12, 2010 Kirstie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Something that becomes clear from the moment you start this novel is that Haven Kimmel is brilliant. She could be part of a new species of evolved humans who sit around philosophizing all day, finding a new way to live. At it's heart, this book is an adventurous journey into rural Indiana where conservative religious fanaticism, alien/extra-terrestrial encounters, mental illness, feminism, philosophy, crystal meth, and Kate Bush all manage to collide. Every page is a bit intriguing but it's also...more

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Jun 12, 2010 Naimi rated it 2 of 5 stars

An extremely well written book, however, I have to say I did not like the first half of the book at all. Perhaps I was trying to read too much into it and knowing what the book was somewhat about, thinking that perhaps some of the things happening were just in Ianthe's imagination and not really happening. The second half of the book made more sense to me, but still a real mess all the way around given we were privy mostly to Ianthe's mind and thinking. A true departure from Kimmel's other writi...more

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Oct 05, 2008 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

What a glorious, riveting, moving, utter mess of a book... I adored it, and think I will need to read it again to truly understand what exactly was going on.

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Jan 20, 2012 Joanne rated it 2 of 5 stars

A very strange and bizarre book! Maybe I just didn't "get it" - many references to Jung, Freud, psychology, philosophy, mythology. father/daughter relationships and themes from classic literature that I never read. The story might actually be brilliant, but I couldn't comprehend what was real and what was an illusion. The relationship of Ianthe and Jacob (her former professor) was dysfunctional itself with his perfection of her actions and dress - like a doll he wanted to present as perfect whil...more

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Jun 12, 2010 Mia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2010

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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About Haven Kimmel

Haven Kimmel was born in New Castle, Indiana, and was raised in Mooreland, Indiana, the focus of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana .

Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and a graduate degree from North Carolina State University, where she studied with novelist Lee Smith....more

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She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana

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avg rating	preview: Iodine Goodreads rating: 3.24 (711 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2258390.Iodine?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1266677891l/2258390.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2258390.Iodine?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Iodine by Haven Kimmel[/url]

Iodine

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