A review by documentno_is
Ice by Anna Kavan

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Ice is difficult to read and hard to follow from a traditional narrative structure- so I suggest abandoning adherence to structure and immersing yourself in the world and images as the author intends. You will feel more than you think- and not always feel in positive ways. I think this author’s style is one of my favorites I’ve read in a long time. I suggest this novel to those looking for heavy handed style, dream like narratives, and ventures into the surreal. Below I've attached my thoughts on the novel in regards to its separate parts. 

 

Part 1 
 
The Girl 
 
His obsession with his former lover is mainly presented in this “dream” in which he sees her frozen over by malicious ice. The way the reader is presented the dream is undistinguishable from the reality the narrator also presents us, which the narrator then explains is how the dreams come on. 
 
From this dream, we also learn of the narrator’s propensity for cruelty. He suffers terrible insomnia, likes to watch the girl that left them suffer in his hallucinations, and is exploring unknown weather phenomenon in a specific country. 
 
Her Husband 
 
The narrator presents us with two contrasting realities both mirroring each other. There is his first visit in which the amicable husband tries to regain peace between the girl and him (but with an almost murderour outburst on some ruins.) This then contrasts the later visit in which he comes uninvited and sees the husband has become cruel and abusive, taking on the qualities of the weather outside. It’s as if the characters are driven not only by their psychological motivations but the physical reality of their setting. 
 
Part 2 
 
In the first sentence we come to know the age of the girl in question, who is uncomfortably young to be at the hands of both our narrator and her husband who seem much older. We don’t know how much bearing this has on the story because while we know we might be in some foreign country- we don’t know where only that it is frigid and icy and we don’t know much about the time period other than that cars are within the setting. 
 
Obsession 
 
The narrator and his obsession with the girl are a central theme of the story. As the obsession grows we see the narrator become more energetic- he seems to have little knowledge of the origin of his obsession but the reader can assume it is born of something like rejection. 
 
The narration shifts often between settings and time period that invokes a dreamlike and surreal quality that props up the narrator’s hallucinations. We are reminded of his headaches periodically as well. The dreams always involve some aspect of the natural environment turning on the girl and restricting or capturing her in some torturous way. 
 
The narrator spends some time relating us to some nuclear/climactic event but is vague about the nature. It seems an important foreshadowing event to the ice and brutality of the story at hand. It is hard to relate whether it’s using the personal as a window for some greater societal or political theme or the reverse. 
 
The Chase 
 
The rising tension of the story is driving us both closer and further from the girl, in some ways the narrator realizes her importance to him but also resents it. He finds her on a ship but he is taken off the ship and she sails away; still, this seemingly reignites his desire to track her down. Despite having lost sight of the girl on the previous ship we are now once again in sight of the girl, although the narrator little knows if it’s her or not but makes a rash decision to follow her off board with some secret police. 
 
Part 3 
 
We learn quickly of some secret police type government system that the town seems to have in place as its government- we heard the warden was of importance on the ship in the previous section but begin to amass clues in tracking him down. We also hear that there may be some kind of dragon living in the water which fits fell into the stories sense of fantasy. We are never quite certain of our narrator’s grip on reality and then furthermore if this world is 1. A true place in perhaps northern Eastern Europe somewhere 2. A made up location with its own distinct set of rules and conditions that acts as an allegory for some aspect of reality or 3. A literal fantasy crafted of ice. All we have are our persistent visions of ruins, the unbearable cold and inability to get warm. ( this is an aside but in some ways this story reminds em a little of the less comedic version of that snl skit where John Hamm is trapped in a car and can’t seem to get warm. ) 
 
Repetition 
 
Once again in this part we have the repetitive narrator’s cyclical thoughts in regards to the girl, her silver hair, and her mother’s abuse. The repition makes us question our narrator’s sanity along with the headaches, the war torn environment, and the bleak surroundings. 
 
Sometimes the story projects itself into character’s actions that we as the narrator’s consciousness should not know- we are the warden oppressively over the girl in the bed not the narrator looking for her. We are watching the girl and her husband’s marriage disintegrate when we know our narrator has already left in the car going back home. 
 
With complete lack of transition we are leaving the warden’s perspective back into our narrator’s journey to see the warden. We ( the reader) don’t know if we are being given some premonitory vision into the goings on that the narrator is not privy to or if we are the narrator’s fanatical imaginations torturing the girl continuously in his mind. 
 
Part 4 
 
Our narrator is now feigning interest in the town, while also relating to his pervious fixation of the singing lemurs. This part seemed largely based in some reality where he is semi-imprisoned in this town by the warden. He knows he might have his friend in the building, but has laid no physical eyes on her. We learn the warden wants our narrator to exert his political influence in favor of the warden’s town. 
 
Part 5 
 
At first this narrative continues in previous fashion, our narrator seeks the girl while also being interspersed with visions of her in terror. Then, we are thrust into a war slaughter- the town is being attacked by some kind of vicious people who seek to pillage and destroy everything in sight. 
 
This finally leads us up to the climax of the novel: the ending which is both inevitable and tragic. Our narrator finds our girl murdered viciously and left mangled outside. He laments not being able to be the one to torture her in this fashion. Still then in the next scene the girl is being spoken of as if alive, the village contemplates having her sacrificed and our narrator balks in horror of their savagery-all the while forgetting he has been dreaming of torture since part 1. It is also interesting that we see here our narrator in a foreign “savage” land yet have none of the barriers of communication we would expect- this fits well with the half-impossible half-dream like state of the novel’s tone. 
 
The story is now almost absurd in playing with time- we are once again the narrator writing about the lemurs- going about daily motions int he safety of his room. Then once again he is wading through wreckage and death to find the girl. In some ways I feel like the narrator/writer of this story is “tricking us” over and over again. He plays with the idea of our 1. Wantign to find out what actually happened to the girl and 2. Our knowledge that the narrator has strange hallucinations of her death. Each time in the later chapters we think surely this is the time she actually dies- and then once again the narrator is back in a physical reality in which he is chasing her and she is alive. 
 
Part 6 
 
Part 6 carries on similarly to Part 5, we are now firmly grasping that there are two separate realities to this story. 
 
The reality in which our narrator sits in a room, performing monotonous tasks, and waiting for war. 
The reality in which our narrator tries to heroically rescue the girl to no avail. 


 
Part 7
 

 
We emerge out of our dream, to realize the events of the story were unreal and useless and the simple fact of our narrator’s fever dream. We achieve the intent of the novel’s foreward- an understanding of a series of images that seek to exist and evoke and explain nothing of their inception. I do now relate the warden ( the keeper) to the earlier chapters of the woman’s husband and realize that the events were in parallel almost identical in rise and fall.