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Ice by Anna Kavan - 4.5* - My Review

Published in 1967, this book tells of a post-apocalyptic dystopian world about to be destroyed by ice, if it is not first destroyed by the ongoing nuclear war. The ice is due to nuclear winter, though parts of the world are still functional. The unnamed protagonist is a man who is looking for his waif-like silver-haired former girlfriend. She is currently under the control of a man called “the warden.” The protagonist travels by ship to many parts of the world to find her, and we find ice encroaching on formerly tropical regions. The girl resists being possessed by either man. Meanwhile, war rages around them. When the protagonist encounters her, she wants nothing to do with him.

“Once again the urgency of the search had reclaimed me; I was totally absorbed in that obsessional need, as for a lost, essential portion of my own being. Everything else in the world seemed immaterial.”

The protagonist is definitely an unreliable narrator. In his mind he is the heroic rescuer, but she does not want to be rescued, and is actually quite frightened of him. The prose is atmospheric and conveys a surrealistic dream-like quality. The following provides a sense of the writing style:

“The trees round the house, sheathed in ice, dripped and sparkled with weird prismatic jewels, reflecting the vivid changing cascades above. Instead of the familiar night sky, the aurora borealis formed a blazing, vibrating roof of intense cold and colour, beneath which the earth was trapped with all its inhabitants, walled in by those impassable glittering ice-cliffs. The world had become an arctic prison from which no escape was possible, all its creatures trapped as securely as were the trees, already lifeless inside their deadly resplendent armour.”

The reader will question what is real and what is a dream or hallucination, especially due to sporadic episodes that must be unreal (e.g., a fight with a polar bear and even a dragon sacrifice). Parts of it read as a psychological thriller and a story of oppression. Are the two men the same person?

“It was clear that he regarded her as his property. I considered that she belonged to me. Between the two of us she was reduced to nothing; her only function might have been to link us together. His face wore the look of extreme arrogance which always repelled me. Yet I suddenly felt an indescribable affinity with him, a sort of blood-contact, generating confusion, so that I began to wonder if there were two of us.”

Thematically this book covers a lot of ground, including environmental catastrophe, war, obsession, and the abuser-victim dynamic. This work was originally classified as science fiction, but it transcends the genre and could easily be classified as climate fiction, psychological suspense, speculative fiction, or literary fiction. I found it riveting and intense.

4.5