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What does the future of the world hold for us little humans? Let us take a look.



The weapons of the atom deployed. The nations of men in battle. Borders and boundaries blurred, broken, crossed, lines drawn as if in the sand and just as easily erased. The small towns and villages suffer first, as always, but the cities and then countries will follow and fall. The world turns hot then cold, its people huddle and flee, the walls of ice encroach: a return to old forms, a slow domination by the world's true master. A new age shall begin: the wounds of the world healed with frost, its little parasites and their strange little ways finally eradicated. 'Tis the snowy season!



But what of the particular men that dominate this book, this world within Ice? That is their specific identity, these men: they dominate. They have dominated the world with their hot and cold wars and so they seek to dominate this woman. Our narrator is one such man, and his foe is another. His foe and his friend and his mirror reflection. Together they yearn to dominate the woman of Ice. Why is this so? Because their desires must be satisfied; they will travel the dying world to find this object of their desire.



But what of this woman of Ice, nameless as the men? Who is she?


Self Portrait, by Anna Kavan

First of all, as the author tells us, and tells us, and tells us, she is a victim. She is a victim. She is a victim. A victim of life, her mother made her into one. A victim of men, the men made her into one. A victim of the world, the world made her into one. A victim of herself, she made herself into one. She is a victim. She is a victim. She is a victim. She may deny it, but she is addicted to victimhood.

Second of all: she is the author. And she is not. She is the author and she is all women whose identity has been taken away by their family. And by men. And by the world. And by themselves. And by their addictions. And she is not. She is a blankness. There is no self-loathing because there is no self. Shall she reinvent herself? Can she even exist outside of the gaze of others? She'll never know, not this woman of Ice. She has only herself to blame, and everyone else.



But what of this author, Anna Kavan? This "Anna Kavan" did indeed reinvent herself: Helen Woods then Helen Ferguson took the name of one of her own characters, from her own novel. She changed who she was and yet was ever the same, struggling with mental health, with the toll of addiction, with the toll of life itself. Two of her children's lives ended early as she tried to end her own life early, again and again. And yet she lived as well! She loved and she traveled and she wrote and she made herself start again and again and again. A life of struggle but a life full of life as well.

But what of this book? It is about subjugation, addiction, and obsession. The relationships and the narrative are as unstable and alienated as the characters, as the writer herself. The book is culmination, excoriation, a book of waking dreams, a book of travel, a book of love, a book of death, a scourge that lashes the world of men, the world of men and women, the world of Anna Kavan.


Woman with a dish of fruit, by Anna Kavan

It is a painful book: do not read this if you are depressed. And yet I left the book invigorated: Kavan transformed her pain into something terrible and beautiful.

It is an angry book: anger at the world, at men, at the self.

It is a feminist book, a political book:

It is a hallucinatory book: do not read this if you are easily confused. And yet one must embrace the confusion, the dreams and dream logic and hallucinations and the stories and characters blending, bleeding into each other. It is a demanding book and yet the world of the book is so easy to enter, to slip into. They say that death in the snow is the easiest death of all.

It was her last book: Anna Kavan died a year after it was published. And yet a writer's brilliance may outlive their earthly torments.

It is a book that was easy for me to admire but hard for me to love. The book is 4.5 stars, rounded up. Something in me can't give it that trifling additional .5 - I can't make it a favorite. I can't. I can't. I can't. A book this bleak can't be a favorite. It can't. It can't. It can't.


Three nudes on plinths, by Anna Kavan

Does this book written in 1967 foretell our future, on this eve of our twenty-first year in this cold, angry, deadly new millennium? Let us take a look.