Ice, by Anna Kavan.
http://www.redmood.com/kavan

Kafka cavorts with Plath in this post-apocalyptic
novel by the late Anna Kavan. A thermonuclear device
has been detonated, and the world slowly awaits its
fate as the planet freezes. In this new Ice Age, a
nameless narrator searches for the girl he loves. But
this isn't just another version of love among the
ruins. The imminent destruction of the world has set
in motion the erosion of civilization. Random acts of
violence and mass hysteria take over the cities, as
the icebergs creep closer. The tragicomic game of
political conquest takes place, starting in
Scandinavia, led by the vainglorious character called
the Warden. The narrator must vie with the Warden for
possession of the girl, whom the Warden has abducted.
The relationship between the narrator and the girl is
not healthy in the least. He views her
contemptuously, as a born victim, and believes that
only he has a right to brutalize her. The girl
herself--with her white-blonde hair and fragility, is
a study in passive-aggression. She can be downright
cruel. Several times during the novel, the anti-hero
leaves her, only to take up the search again. The two
men fight over the girl, without actual care for her;
she is merely a pretty prop on which hang their
aggressions and neuroses. It mirrors the futility of
the political games, where the various powers vie to
gain power over a dying world. There is a Kafkaesque
sense of absurdity, along with that author's
existential despair of humankind's folly.

These psychodramas take place amid a surrealistic,
nightmare landscape. Kavan's images of the
encroaching ice are beautiful and deadly. It's
reminiscent (and perhaps even inspired) the arctic
cover art of Radiohead's 'Kid A.' The hallucinatory
intensity might be due to Kavan's drug use. Born
Helen Ferguson, Kavan legally changed her name to a
character in one of her novels. She suffered severe
depression and self-medicated with heroin, eventually
becoming an addict. Like Plath or Sexton, Kavan uses
bouts of depression to create brutal, enigmatic
images. Her characters in this book are forces of
nature themselves. The eternal war between the sexes
is illuminated unsparingly--at odds with her delicate,
mannered prose. ICE appears to document Kavan's
brilliant, if unsettling interior landscape.



--Craig L. Gidney

=====
"Those that bite the hand that feeds them sooner or later
must meet...The Big Dentist"

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