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terrypaulpearce's review against another edition
4.0
Kavan is a hidden gem; she deserves to be much more well-known than she is. Even this, which is not rated as one of her best and stayed unpublished for decades, is a beautiful insight into anxiety and fear and an engaging and compelling portrayal of a world of sweeping high-up decisions and arcane rules and how they play havoc with one man. Fully deserves to be thought of as a contemporary of Kafka, as some authors and critics suggest.
kingkong's review against another edition
2.0
This book is just not very good to be honest but it had some nice scenes
worstwitch's review against another edition
5.0
Residual guilt that roots deep in childhood & suffocates you for ever after. The never-good-enough-i-don't-deserve-anything that Kavan captures so perfectly always. The personification of exterior objects that mirrors the interior mind-- the garden shrubs shaped into unrelenting chess figures & black, hard, shiny cars. I don't know how Kavan lived with her own mind-- always haunted / hunted without rest.
This passage here:
"Though I'm so eager to meet this being composed of all my past selves, the prospect frightens me, too. I'm afraid of the face I and other people may have given him or, worst of all, that he may be faceless. Once in imagination - or was it in reality? - I felt my inmost self dissolve and fall away from me. And lately I've developed a foolish trick of looking the other way when I pass a mirror, in case there should be no reflection there. To find that the personality I've been building up all my life was without a face would be the most appalling of all possible discoveries.
I'm quite prepared to meet the face of a criminal. I've known guilt all my life and been shunned and hated for it by my fellow creatures. In a sense, guilt has evolved me; without it, neither I nor my other self could exist. Not only is that self the criminal but the victim as well, the judge and, ultimately, the executioner. I can accept my guilt now that I recognize it as my own creation. We all of us construct our own world from what is within us, and this is the obvious reason why it's so vitally important to know what is there."
This passage here:
"Though I'm so eager to meet this being composed of all my past selves, the prospect frightens me, too. I'm afraid of the face I and other people may have given him or, worst of all, that he may be faceless. Once in imagination - or was it in reality? - I felt my inmost self dissolve and fall away from me. And lately I've developed a foolish trick of looking the other way when I pass a mirror, in case there should be no reflection there. To find that the personality I've been building up all my life was without a face would be the most appalling of all possible discoveries.
I'm quite prepared to meet the face of a criminal. I've known guilt all my life and been shunned and hated for it by my fellow creatures. In a sense, guilt has evolved me; without it, neither I nor my other self could exist. Not only is that self the criminal but the victim as well, the judge and, ultimately, the executioner. I can accept my guilt now that I recognize it as my own creation. We all of us construct our own world from what is within us, and this is the obvious reason why it's so vitally important to know what is there."
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