Ice

 
 

Ice

by Anna Kavan

Peter Owen Publishers

1967, reprinted 2006

 

 

I'm usually reading more than one book at once, usually 3-5 at any one time, so when I finish two in short order, it's not because I started and finished a whole new book after finishing the one before, it's just because I finished two around the same time.

 

Ice is a first person narrative of a man repeatedly trying to find and save a woman he loves as the world ends. The world is ending because it is freezing, glaciers are advancing from both poles and will eventually meet and cover the equator. In the mean time, governments are collapsing, refugees are fleeing, warlords are making war.

 
The narrator is supremely unreliable. At times he is obviously hallucinating, at others the reality of anything he says is unclear. What is clear is that he does not love this woman but wants to control her, he hurts her, and she flees him. The most obvious true thing is the thing he lies most fervently to himself about.

 
The writing is in short, staccato sentences, the atmosphere is dreamlike or hallucinatory, and it's a good book to read in the cold of winter. The book reminds me of The Third Policeman or Travels in Nihilon, the narrator specifically reminds me of Humbert Humbert from Lolita. I liked this one, and it was very fast moving.