Change the Name

by Anna Kavan

One of Kavan’s early novels, this is a fascinating period piece illuminating the peculiarities and tensions of English rural life early in the 20th century.

Genres: Fiction

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Anna Kavan was born "Helen Woods" in France on April 10, 1901 to wealthy expatriate British parents.

Her initial six works were published under the name of Helen Ferguson, her first married name. These early novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work. I Am Lazarus (1945), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. The change in her writing style and physical appearance coincided with a mental breakdown. During this time, Helen also renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her own novel Let Me Alone.

Around 1926 Anna became addicted to heroin. Her addiction has been described as an attempt to self-medicate rather than recreational. Kavan made no apologies for her heroin usage. She is popularly supposed to have died of a heroin overdose. In fact she died of heart failure, though she had attempted suicide several times during her life.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it was not much after nine o’clock, the village already seemed to be deeply asleep. The cottages, the church, the farm buildings, all struck her as strangely dark and deserted. There was something sinister in the darkness. She walked on. She no longer felt as though she had escaped. Depression closed in on her. She had the sensation of having come to a place that had recently been abandoned by all its inhabitants. The dark dwellings surrounding the green had an ominous secret air. Perhaps if she entered one she would find the occupants sitting dead round the table, overtaken by some sudden, unimaginable doom. (p 250)

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this immediately after "Let Me Alone" it was tempting to see it as another version of the earlier novel. Celia is an unwanted girl child, denied the chance at Oxford, taking a husband as a way of getting out of a stifling home life. But it diverges quickly, as she uses and drops a series of partners in an increasingly cold cycle of exploitation, whilst at the same time cultivating a literary career. We do get the old Kavan notes about "unreality", but it occurs as the fictional storyteller gets more engrossed in her work. Meanwhile her own daughter seems to repeat the pattern of neglect. This is like "Let Me Alone" but drastically re-factored, all the character traits and roles re-assigned to a wider drama of individuals.

Is this an attempt at self-analysis or self-criticism through fiction? Even though I've read the Jeremy Reed biography I don't think too much is known about the origins of this work. It was published in 1941, under the new name of "Anna Kavan", but has many similarities with the Helen Ferguson novels. Was it an earlier manuscript reworked after the breakdown that produced "Asylum Piece"? The time structure has jumps and unnarrated changes, something like later works like "A Scarcity Of Love". I suppose we can't use any of Kavan's fiction as straightforward psychical autobiographies, as she repeats and reviews situations from different angles in different works. Perhaps in this work she was coming to terms with an alternative view of the heroine of "Let Me Alone".

[Laurie Frost · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite as bleak as I am Lazarus, this one is about a woman who cannot connect -- not with her parents, only briefly with her husband and once widowed, her lover, and her child -- and betrays those who show her kindness.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Archived review here.