Ice

Paperback, 158 pages

English language

Published Dec. 13, 1997 by Peter Owen.

ISBN:
978-0-7206-1268-4
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OCLC Number:
85364699

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3 stars (14 reviews)

Published July 1st 2006 by Peter Owen Publishers (first published 1967)

18 editions

Ice by Anna Kavan

5 stars

This book is about the main character, a woman, constantly referred to as "the girl" and a third person, "the warden". We don't learn their names. It is not a heartwarming story, but very captivating, about life in a world at war, altered by climate change entering an ice age. There are some hints in the book that it could be some kind of nuclear winter.

The story is unsettling, sometimes hallucinogenic, weird. And a total must-read !

Review of 'Ice' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I recognize this book’s literary significance (and there are plenty of 5-star reviews you can read that go deep into the subtext and allegory), and it’s certainly inventive and surreal, but I found it a painful slog to read through, even though it’s less than 200 pages.

Review of 'Ice' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This was a difficult book to read and stay focused on. It was very dreamlike and surreal. The book had you frequently questioning what was going on, whose point of view you were seeing things from, what was real, what imagined? Were there two men obsessed with the girl or just two different aspects of the same man? Was the girl's indifference and sometimes outright hatred and coldness to the man, the ice itself? So many questions, so little answered!

Good at setting a mood of paranoia and struggle, of reality vs delusion, of obsessive thoughts driven by compulsion. Sudden changes of scene, of the perception of the main character were disorienting and confusing. Nightmare landscapes, threatening shadowy others always lurking, gave a very convincing feeling of psychosis, lol. Kind of weak on plot though.

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