A review by mafiabadgers
Ice by Anna Kavan

dark reflective

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

First read 03/2022, reread 01/2025

Armed men came up, pushed me back, seized her by her frail shoulders. Big tears fell from her eyes like icicles , like diamonds, but I was unmoved. They did not seem to me like real tears. She herself did not seem quite real. She was pale and transparent, the victim I used for my own enjoyment in dreams.

When I began my reread, I was determined to pay close attention, to winnow out the real from the vision. At first I felt confident, but then the book threw me; the section I had just finished, that seemed to contain both real and false, may itself have been hallucinated. It was unclear, and anyway it didn't matter. I had been asking the wrong question. It is all a phantasmagoria, and not least because that is the way of fiction. As the pages went by, I let go of my task, let the book carry me along on its improbable patterns.

None of the characters are named. Aside from the narrator, they exist mostly insofar as they can be extrapolated by the reader, though there's enough offered up to make this approach rewarding. Speculative fiction is often judged, at least in part, by the imaginativeness of the author. Here the imagination of the reader is on trial also. The characters can be arranged in various ways to suit analysis: the narrator and the warden are the same person; the narrator symbolises a patriarchal society; the narrator is heroin and the girl, Kavan.