Mercury

by Anna Kavan, Doris Lessing (Foreword)

This hitherto unpublished novel, an exciting literary discovery, is from Anna Kavan's most creative period. A work of sustained imaginative vision, it contains some of the novelists' best hallucinogenic writing. The beautiful "glass girl" Luz is pursued from one imaginary country to another by Luke, whose love for her becomes a pathological obsession. Luke is as bewitched, too, by the Indris, singing lemurs whose magical harmonies he encounters in a tropical forest of pellucid charms. The lemurs have no enemies in their jungle world "where intelligence and affection were cherished, and destruction and cruelty had no place." Luke has chosen his wandering life of exile to escape his own shortcomings and failure in human relations. And he wants to protect Luz, estranged from her sadistic husband Chas. Luke himself reveals shades of latent sadism and becomes dependent on tablets that induce horror, shame and ecstatic excitement. The narrative is projected like a series of dream sequences, enigma, and illusion intertwined in the mound of Kafka. Yet, as in her novel Ice , Anna Kavan has fashioned a coruscating landscape of her own making—apocalyptic, compelling, unforgettable.

Genres: Fiction, 20th Century, Novels

136 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

Anna Kavan was born "Helen Woods" in France on April 10, 1901 to wealthy expatriate British parents.

Her initial six works were published under the name of Helen Ferguson, her first married name. These early novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work. I Am Lazarus (1945), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. The change in her writing style and physical appearance coincided with a mental breakdown. During this time, Helen also renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her own novel Let Me Alone.

Around 1926 Anna became addicted to heroin. Her addiction has been described as an attempt to self-medicate rather than recreational. Kavan made no apologies for her heroin usage. She is popularly supposed to have died of a heroin overdose. In fact she died of heart failure, though she had attempted suicide several times during her life.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anna Kavan's Ice (1968) is an unsettling masterpiece of subjective storytelling, a stark apocalyptic vision owing more to surrealism than science fiction, wherein a nameless man seeks a nameless girl across a world being devoured by eternal glacier. It's icily beautiful and entirely unique. It might also inform other more recent subjective art, particularly recent David Lynch films (this is my pet theory).

Mercury, following essentially the same two characters (though this time named) through a highly similar scenario, reads as a posthumously published variation or companion piece. Without knowing any of the context (Doris Lessing's "foreword" is a single anemic paragraph), this could actually be an early draft, even, rewritten in full for Ice. Ideas presented here -- icy destruction, ambiguity, narrative unreliably, hallucinatory violence -- all reach purer forms in that novel, though the alternative elaborations here serve as useful counterpoint. Actually, I'm entirely glad this was published as well, despite its redundancy. Such is the enigma and fascination of Ice that any further glimpse into its world is to me entirely worth seeking out, and Kavan's hard-edged detached prose always glitters with frosty purpose and originality.

Furthermore, this is not quite the same story. Where Ice was predominantly told from the first person perspective of the male protagonist, Mercury splits its third person perspective between the two, giving equal voice to its victim-heroine. This, with some new sequences, the haunting modified ending, and shifted motifs (the titular Mercury himself, for instance, a kind of doom-herald and patron of flight) moves this into somewhat different conceptual territory. How different exactly will require considerably more thought, and maybe an Ice re-reading. But Mercury seems more directly to address semi-willing abusive relationships, or maybe sadomasochistic relationships. However poeticized Kavan's telling, this is the dark core of the story. With Ice, well, there are A LOT of things going on with Ice that I don't entirely have a handle on, but it's a little more abstracted and might be a little more generally about the desirable female as powerless victim as portrayed in male fantasy and male-gaze-driven cultural product. And narrative-wise, there're several additional terribly intriguing details thrown into the mix. Ice is definitely the more complex work. But as I said, Mercury, even if it's a draft, is actually telling a slightly different story. Part of it ends up embedded in Ice, yes, but not all of it.

So probably read Ice first, but be glad that this exists, in case you, like me, become a Kavan obsessive. Actually, taken entirely alone this nearly as fascinating as its counterpart, so perhaps it would serve just as well by itself.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suppose that having written this book in the haze of a drug-addled mind, Kavan forgot that she had already written this book once before as "Ice".

Kavan's writing is beautiful and captivating, and I would have enjoyed this book more had I never read "Ice". That is certainly the book of the two that should be read.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Posthumously published by Peter Owen, this novel is considered by some readers to be an early draft of Kavan’s most well-known novel Ice, or if not a draft, simply a lesser version of that book. However, while there are obvious parallels to Ice, Mercury is very much its own story, sometimes filling in gaps found in Ice, serving almost as a companion piece, and other times showing us a different perspective on an identical or near-identical scene from Ice.

Full review here.

[Hesper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not entirely certain why I liked what I just read. It seemed weirdly self-obsessed, which rarely works, but it does here, assuming that's what it is.

I'll have to come back to this; too soon for a review.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating doesn't reflect the quality of writing, which is excellent as always from Anna Kavan. This just seems like an alternate draft of Ice, though- most of it is almost exactly the same. I don't think this needed to be printed.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anna Kavan wrote some very good books but she also had a few failures and this is one of them. It reads like a cross-breeding of "Ice" with "Who Are You?" with elements seen in other stories, and chdcking Jeremy Reed's biography reveals this is indeed a chunk cut away from "Ice" and published posthumously. It would seem the right decision to remove this section - although there are a few interesting scenes and ideas, the writing sinks in to her worst "nameless dread"-style repetitive weak description. The characters are too sketchy to sustain even the fragmentary story assigned to them.

[Phillip Ramm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously a first attempt at the story which became her most famous book, 'Ice'. Slightly more realistic, but another a weird drug fantasy metaphor thing... ToriT, you would love the bit about the hooting lemurs...

[Mark Katzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given Kavan's obsessions, this one hits the mark.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seems like a very polished draft of her brilliant novel "Ice," this is also a very good novel in its own right. Not as fractured as Ice, but not linear either. If you liked Ice, you'll like this.