SciFi Review: Ice is a weird book, that ended up being just a bit too weird for me. Anna Kavan (1901-68) wrote an interesting and experimental novel verging on science fiction, but in the end it left me with not enough there there. Told in the first person by a man (I call the Pursuer) who always follows after a delicate, silver-haired woman. Their world is surreal, unclear, unreal. The Pursuer has visions, seeing things he couldn't see, at times entering another personality. It's uncertain whether these visions are hallucinations, dreams, a form of second sight, a seeing of possible futures or alternate realities, of different planes of existence or alternate time-lines. Even madness. Kavan's characters are aware of their disjointed view of life. The young woman is "too preoccupied with her own dream world." The Pursuer "had a curious feeling that that I was living on several planes simultaneously," is "restrained by the peculiar uncertainty as to what was real," and sees "a flashback to something dreamed." "The hallucination of one moment did not fit the reality of the next ... it was reality happening in quite a different way." The uncertainty extends to the nature of the characters. The Pursuer and his mortal rival for the woman, the warden, are at once deadly enemies, best of friends, and almost the same person: "Our looks tangled together. I seemed to be looking at my own reflection ... not sure which of us was which ... I continually found I was not myself but him ... we were like identical twin brothers." Both want the woman, both are sadistic, both are willing to kill. All these bewildering facets made for slow reading as I kept going back to the beginning of a chapter to make sense of some new bit of information, but no explanation or clarification was to be found. Ice has been called science fiction. At one point the Pursuer sees partially human creatures "reminding me of mutants in science fiction stories." It's actually more a fantasy novel, today we would call it dystopian and post-apocalyptic. There are massive encroaching ice fields, the product of a seeming nuclear winter, though the speed of the glaciers makes one think of ice-nine (see Cat's Cradle (1963)): "No country was safe ... from the present devastation, which would spread ... and ultimately cover the entire planet." With the coming end of the world, the remaining countries war with each other, this conflict embodied in the Pursuer's brutal rival, the warden. Kafkaesque repressive political measures are caused by and exacerbate the effects of the approaching natural disaster. The government is closing in, as is the ice, as are the two men pursuing the woman. The writing, being deeply interior and egoistic yet often richly imagistic, is reminiscent of Anais Nin; the dead-pan statements of the fantastic also remind the reader of Kafka: "I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons," or "People whispered or cleared their throats. The jury looked tired, or bored." The silver-haired woman is the source of all desire and conflict. Yet she's desirable only because she must be, because the author sees her (or sees herself) as infinitely desirable. She has little personality beyond proclaiming her victimhood: "Victimization in childhood had made her accept the fate of a victim ... something in her demanded victimization and terror ... expecting to be ill-treated, to be made a victim." There is little that is apparently attractive in her child's body. She has no agency. The Pursuer states, "I myself did not understand my compulsion to see this girl," as the relationship "had always been painful and unrewarding." Perhaps like an addiction. They say in dreams all the people dreamed about are simply the dreamer. Here, all the characters are variations of each other, even the girl as the victim is the other side of her two abusers, who are sometimes the same person ("we were like halves of one being"). The victim needs her abusers as they inexplicably need her. The story ties in with Kavan's own life, her biography being as intriguing as any novel (being, inter alia, a lifelong heroin addict). This is a surreal, psychological thriller of a novel, but there was little "why" or personal involvement. For most of the book the characters were one-dimensional, uninteresting, cold, distant. There was little human contact. It was hard to care as the adventures were often repetitive, with the Pursuer finding the girl and losing the girl over and over. Ice is an intriguing and odd effort with a lot to talk about, but did not make an addict of me. [3★]
No comments:
Post a Comment