Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Ice by Anna Kavan

9 reviews

ashgalwoah's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I enjoyed Ice, it is a surreal commentary on war, abuse, narratives/perspectives, politics, and environmental disaster. The writing style is dream like, hallucinogenic, and intoxicating. The world is definitely influenced by Vietnam War/WW2, yet in a futuristic dystopian ice hell scape.

My favorite part about Ice was it’s morally ambiguous narrator, it was engaging to grapple with his character, weather he is evil or good, abuser or savior. 

A good read!
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crowlandrew's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I feel like I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time. This is a deep dive into a damaged psyche, a dissociated fever dream with a brutal, brittle, frozen heart. Maybe one of the most emotionally challenging texts I've ever read.
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jakobvongunten's review against another edition

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4.0

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caramine's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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rustedtrains's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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johnclough's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

A hallucinogenic blizzard of a novel replete with wonderful turns of phrase. Easier to get into when you let go of any hope of coherent narrative. Kavan called Ice a fable and it is certainly packed with allegory. Plenty of this is obvious Cold War reference but there remains much that feels more esoteric. Having a psychotic, psychopathic narrator is challenging at times, and I'm not sure I found much satisfaction in the ending, but certainly a vivid and unique read.
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roach's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The snow thickened, inexhaustibly falling, incessantly sifting down, spreading a sheet of sterile whiteness over the face of the dying world, burying the violent and their victims together in a mass grave, obliterating the last trace of man and his works.

I didn't know anything about Anna Kavan before reading this and so I went into this mostly expecting something of an icy adventure with some apocalypse elements of an impending ice age. What I didn't know is how heavy it would be on the themes of abuse and trauma, which made sense the more I read about the author.

It ironically took a bit for me to get warm with Kavan's Ice. The dreamlike narration full of tangential interruptions took some getting used to but once I realized what it was trying to achieve, I was more able to follow the text like it was a dream itself that flows from one state into another without any questioning of itself. Fitting of a text with a protagonist whose delusions become clearer with time.
The plot also took a while for me to make much sense. What starts as the enigmatic search for a woman by the seemingly well-intentioned protagonist eventually becomes more questionable as time goes on and occasional flashes of hateful desires or imaginations pop up until the character eventually fully reveals himself in the end as despicable as the actual antagonist of the story. 
I'm very unsure if what I'm taking away from this book is what was intended by the author, but the story read to me as being about how the entitlement to be the savior of someone else can become abuse by taking away that person's own agency to live their own life. The more the protagonist felt like the nameless woman needed his help to survive and be safe, the less that woman thrived which in turn fed his blind rage. The victim becomes the victim by having that role pushed on her by people that are convinced she needs protection and don't realize their forceful imposition and pitying is actually what enables the misery.

It's an interesting perspective on abusive relationships and how they can be caught in a perpetual spiral. The text builds all of that up with quite a lot of fantastical atmosphere as well. The description of the freezing-over landscapes is amazing. Lots of great language about the ice and snow. The glaciers and frost. The cold comes across the page very, very well and matches the cold subject matter.
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miinabiina's review

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3.0

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leduyhxxng's review

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

my feelings of this novel are irrelevant for the time being. i need to read a bit more and deeper into literature of this kind, and then give it a reread before im confident ive arrived at something even remotely thoughtful. so far, this book has wrecked my narrow definition of literature and reality and my life goals and probably more that, as a noob, id failed to recognise. i thought im a plot hoe (lol see what i did there), but this plotless showpiece has truly finished me (to think that i finished it would be a wild accusation, who even am i?!). so theres that.

a few notes for further venture into this reality-bending literature genre: slipstream (non-genre)
Science fiction writers whose work qualified as slipstream include J. G. Ballard, John Sladek, Thomas M. Disch, some of Philip K. Dick. Other writers, who were outside the science fiction genre but whose work could conceivably fit into the wider definition allowed by slipstream include Angela Carter, Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami, Jorge Luis Borges, and William S. Burroughs. Another notable inclusion was, of course, Anna Kavan.

In literature, since slipstream stands above genres of fiction, many examples of magical realism can certainly be recognised as slipstream, one notable mention being Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Some television drama would qualify: The Singing Detective by Dennis Potter, and a BBC series called Life on Mars. In cinema, recent slipstream films include Christopher Nolan's Memento, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's Impacto and Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich.

— Compiled from Christopher Priest's introduction to Anna Kavan's novel Ice

 
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