From the Bookshelf of Third Place Books: Booze & Lasers…

Ice: 50th Anniversary Edition

Anna Kavan,

Jonathan Lethem (Contributor)

Start date: June 22, 2021

Finish date: July 19, 2021

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Jul 20, 2021 Mihwa rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I found this book repulsive. I've also spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about it, trying to understand why I disliked the experience so much and how others could possibly have walked away with a positive view of it. I've also been questioning whether my visceral response was the point and whether that changes my opinion of the book. (Ultimately: no.)

(view spoiler) I found this book repulsive. I've also spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about it, trying to understand why I disliked the experience so much and how others could possibly have walked away with a positive view of it. I've also been questioning whether my visceral response was the point and whether that changes my opinion of the book. (Ultimately: no.)

(view spoiler)[Ice does a lot of things really well. Kavan writes with this slippery, lyrical prose in a story studded with sexualized violence, toxic relationships, and a claustrophobic and inevitable apocalypse. Line by line, it's beautiful. It's an experience more than a novel, and I had to loosen my expectation of plot or sense in order to keep moving forward. I frequently thought that maybe I'd skipped a page or a paragraph, but, no, that's just how the book is. Assuming this is all intentionally done, it conveys a headspace unlike any book I've read, and it's extremely effective.

On the other hand, the entire book is bleak. Relentlessly so. The book is from the point of view of an arrogant narrator stalking a child-like woman. His feelings towards her pinwheel from desire to destruction, all suffused with explicit language about dominating and breaking her. (Ugh. Even thinking about it grosses me out.) Rape and death are frequent and imaginative, and there is a repetition to the scenes that I initially read as being reflective of a really damaged author. The writing is obsessive, and the themes ugly. The entire world is full of unexplained horrors.

I vacillate a lot on the intentionality behind the writing, and how much of this is crafted versus left loose versus some combination of the above. I am also unsure how much of it directly reflects the author's own suffering. It feels raw and uncomfortable, and, between Kavan's drug use, mental health, history of dysfunctional relationships, experiences during WWII, and transformation from Helen Woods to Alice Kavan, there's a lot of turmoil to exploit. One of my book club buddies described finishing the book as feeling like the she had violated the author, and that rang true to me. Does it matter if this was intended and that Kavan the author has circled this dynamic several times in other books? Are we posthumously supporting a woman's ability to share an experience of pain or are we ogling? What does it say about a person who is so ostentatiously putting herself in her work? Ugh. (hide spoiler)] ...more

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Jul 05, 2021 Christina rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Beautifully written but no real plot to speak of. Is the girl a metaphor for the author’s heroin habit? Is the narrator, with the girl a metaphor for addiction? Unsympathetic characters, meandering action, hallucinatory imagery.

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Aug 15, 2021 Dustin rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club

Jul 17, 2021 Teresa Lutz marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Jul 14, 2021 Jay Villacis rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Jul 14, 2021 Melissa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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