Ice (Kavan novel)

Last updated

Ice
Ice Kavan cover.png
Cover for the 1st UK edition
Author Anna Kavan
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genres Dystopia, Surrealism
Publisher Peter Owen Publishers
Publication date
1967
Pages158

Ice is a novel by British writer Anna Kavan, published in 1967. Ice was Kavan's last work to be published before her death, the first to land her mainstream success, and remains her best-known work. Generally regarded as genre-defying, it has been labelled a work of science fiction, Nouveau roman , [1] and slipstream fiction. [2]

Contents

In 2017 Penguin Books published for the Penguin Classics a 50th anniversary edition. [3] The edition contains a foreword by Jonathan Lethem and an afterword by Kate Zambreno. [4]

Background

Kavan completed an early draft of Ice in March 1964. It was first submitted to Weidenfeld & Nicolson by Francis King but was rejected. It was then accepted by Peter Owen, though he expressed doubts about the manuscript, citing a deficiency of character and narrative. Kavan defended the work, writing that "it is not meant to be realistic writing. It's a sort of present day fable..." She "saw the story as one of those recurring dreams ... which at times become nightmare. This dreamlike atmosphere is the essence of the [novel]." [5] Early readers described the novel as a cross between the work of Kafka and British television series The Avengers, which Kavan felt was an apt description. [6]

Over the next six months, the manuscript went through extensive revisions. Owen accepted the manuscript again, and convinced Kavan to change the title from The Ice World to simply Ice. [7]

Like most of Kavan's novels, Ice contains autobiographical elements that are fictionalized, but for this novel in particular are used in a surrealistic sense: Kavan's extensive travelling, her marriage to artist Stuart Edmonds, and her unhappy childhood are important inspirations for elements of the novel. [8] The imagery of ice was inspired by Kavan's time in New Zealand, when she was not far from Antarctica. The Madagascan Indris, an element which reoccurs throughout the story, came to Kavan after watching a David Attenborough nature documentary. [9]

Plot outline

Ice is set during an apocalypse in which a massive, monolithic ice shelf, caused by nuclear war, is engulfing the earth. The male protagonist, and narrator of the story, spends the narrative feverishly pursuing a young, nameless woman, and contemplating the overwhelming but conflicting feelings he has for her, that slowly end up being intruded by the worsening atmosphere of the setting. Initially he must negotiate the presence of the woman's husband and later he faces more serious opposition from the Warden who seeks to keep her under his control. Christopher Priest, in his introduction to the novel, writes that the book is "virtually plotless" and "told in scenes of happenstance and coincidence." [2]

Style and themes

Ice has been described as dreamlike, cryptic, [10] unsettling, [11] and hallucinogenic. [12] There are no named characters, and the plot and geography of the story may seem arbitrary by the standards of realistic or popular fiction. [13] The narrative is regularly interrupted by dreams and hallucinations, and it is suggested that the narrator is delusional. [11]

Attention has been paid to the recurring imagery of coldness and encroaching ice, which is commonly associated with Kavan's struggles with heroin addiction and mental illness. Other critics argue that the symbolism resists straightforward biographical interpretations. [14] [15]

The novel's preoccupations with violent sexuality and female agency have invited feminist interpretations.

Reception

Ice was Kavan's first major literary success. After the publication of the novel, she was profiled in the September 1967 edition of Nova , alongside Jean Rhys. [16] Brian Aldiss, whose work Kavan admired, praised it as the best science fiction novel of 1967. In 1968, a week after Kavan's death, Doubleday published Ice in the United States on the advice of Aldiss. [17]

Notes

  1. Callard 1995, p. 141.
  2. 1 2 Priest 2006, p. 1.
  3. Michaud, Jon (30 November 2017). "A haunting story of sexual assault and climate catastrophe decades ahead its time". The New Yorker.
  4. Kavan, Anna (14 November 2017). Ice. Penguin Classics. New York: Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN   9780143131991. LCCN   2017018717; pbk; x+193 pages; with foreword by Jonathan Lethem & afterword by Kate Zambreno{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  5. Callard 1995, p. 137.
  6. Callard 1995, p. 136.
  7. Callard 1995, p. 138.
  8. Callard 1995, p. 139.
  9. Callard 1995, p. 140.
  10. Priest 2006, p. 6.
  11. 1 2 Freeman, Hannah (2011). "Winter reads: Ice by Anna Kavan". Guardian.
  12. Rogers, Michael (1997). "Ice". Library Journal. 122 (16): 132.
  13. Priest 2006, p. 8.
  14. Priest 2006, p. 9.
  15. Stephenson, G (2011). "An inward ice-age: A reading of Anna Kavan's Ice". Foundation. 40 (113): 20–28.
  16. Callard 1995, p. 144.
  17. Callard 1995, p. 150.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Aldiss</span> British science fiction writer (1925–2017)

Brian Wilson Aldiss was an English writer, artist and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Harrison (writer)</span> American science fiction author (1925–2012)

Harry Max Harrison was an American science fiction author, known mostly for his character The Stainless Steel Rat and for his novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966). The latter was the rough basis for the motion picture Soylent Green (1973). Long resident in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, Harrison was involved in the foundation of the Irish Science Fiction Association, and was, with Brian Aldiss, co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.

Anna Kavan was a British novelist, short story writer and painter. Originally publishing under her first married name, Helen Ferguson, she adopted the name Anna Kavan in 1939, not only as a pen name but as her legal identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Priest (novelist)</span> British author (1943–2024)

Christopher Mackenzie Priest was a British novelist and science fiction writer. His works include Fugue for a Darkening Island (1972), The Inverted World (1974), The Affirmation (1981), The Glamour (1984), The Prestige (1995), and The Separation (2002).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Lethem</span> American novelist, essayist, short story writer

Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College.

The slipstream genre is a term denoting forms of speculative fiction that blends together science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction or do not remain in conventional boundaries of genre and narrative. It directly extends from the experimentation of the New Wave science fiction movement while also borrowing from fantasy, psychological fiction, philosophical fiction and other genres or styles of literature.

Daniel Fuchs was an American screenwriter, fiction writer, and essayist.

<i>Gather Yourselves Together</i> Novel by Philip K. Dick

Gather Yourselves Together is an early novel by the science fiction author Philip K. Dick, written around 1948–1950, and published posthumously by WCS Books in 1994. As with many of his early books which were considered unsuitable for publication when they were first submitted as manuscripts, this was not science fiction, but rather a work of straight literary fiction. The manuscript was 481 pages in length. At the time it was published, it was one of only two Dick novels for which the manuscript was known to exist which remained unpublished. The other, Voices from the Street, was published in 2007.

A fix-up is a novel created from several short fiction stories that may or may not have been initially related or previously published. The stories may be edited for consistency, and sometimes new connecting material, such as a frame story or other interstitial narration, is written for the new work. The term was coined by the science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, who published several fix-ups of his own, including The Voyage of the Space Beagle, but the practice exists outside of science fiction. The use of the term in science fiction criticism was popularised by the first (1979) edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by Peter Nicholls, which credited van Vogt with the creation of the term. The name “fix-up” comes from the changes that the author needs to make in the original texts, to make them fit together as though they were a novel. Foreshadowing of events from the later stories may be jammed into an early chapter of the fix-up, and character development may be interleaved throughout the book. Contradictions and inconsistencies between episodes are usually worked out.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhys Davies (writer)</span> Welsh novelist

Vivian Rees Davies, known as Rhys Davies, was a Welsh novelist and short story writer, who wrote in the English language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attia Hosain</span>

Attia Hosain was a British-Indian novelist, author, writer, broadcaster, journalist and actor. She was a woman of letters and a diasporic writer. She wrote in English although her mother tongue was Urdu. She wrote the semi-autobiographical Sunlight on a Broken Column and a collection of short stories named Phoenix Fled. Her career began in England in semi-exile making a contribution to post-colonial literature. Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, Aamer Hussein and Kamila Shamsie have acknowledged her influence.

The following is a list of works by Arthur C. Clarke.

<i>New Writings in SF 22</i>

New Writings in SF 22 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Kenneth Bulmer, the first volume of nine he oversaw in the New Writings in SF series in succession to the series' originator, John Carnell. It was first published in hardcover by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1973, followed by a paperback edition under the slightly variant title New Writings in SF - 22 issued by Corgi in 1974. The contents of this volume, together with those of volumes 21 and 23 of the series, were later included in the omnibus anthology New Writings in SF Special 1, issued by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1975.

<i>The Blythes Are Quoted</i> Book by Lucy Maud Montgomery

The Blythes Are Quoted is a book completed by L. M. Montgomery (1874–1942) near the end of her life but not published in its entirety until 2009. It is her eleventh book to feature Anne Shirley Blythe, who first appears in her first and best-known novel, Anne of Green Gables (1908), and then in Anne of Avonlea (1909), Chronicles of Avonlea (1912), Anne of the Island (1915), Anne's House of Dreams (1917), Rainbow Valley (1919), Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920), Rilla of Ingleside (1921), Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), and Anne of Ingleside (1939). It consists of an experimental blend of fifteen short stories, forty-one poems, and numerous vignettes featuring Anne and members of her family discussing her poetry. The book focuses on small-town life in Glen St. Mary, Prince Edward Island, and is divided into two halves: one preceding the events of the First World War of 1914–1918 and one relating incidents after the war, up to and including the beginning of the Second World War of 1939–1945.

<i>The Twilight of Briareus</i> 1974 novel by John Middleton Murry Jr.

The Twilight of Briareus is a science-fiction novel by John Middleton Murry Jr., under his pseudonym Richard Cowper. It "combine[s] disaster and invasion themes". John Clute sees it as the book that Cowper's other novels resemble at heart.

<i>Sleep Has His House</i> (novel) Novel by Anna Kavan

Sleep Has His House is a novel by Anna Kavan. The novel is a dark coming of age narrative, which juxtaposes realistic semi-autobiographical accounting of life, with sections of subconscious wanderings.

<i>Ryder</i> (novel)

Ryder (1928) is the first novel by Djuna Barnes. A composite of different literary styles, from lyrical poetry to sentimental fiction, it is an example of a modernist novel in the Rabelaisian tradition of bawdy and parodic fiction. Nearly every chapter is written in a different style. The novel is thought to draw on elements of Barnes's own life.

<i>Nebula Award Stories 4</i> 1969 anthology edited by Poul Anderson

Nebula Award Stories 4 is an anthology of award-winning science fiction short works edited by Poul Anderson. It was first published in the United Kingdom in hardcover by Gollancz in November 1969. The first American edition was published by Doubleday in December of the same year. Paperback editions followed from Pocket Books in the U.S. in January 1971, and Panther in the U.K. in December 1971. The American editions bore the variant title Nebula Award Stories Four.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romance (prose fiction)</span> Genre of novel

Romance, is a "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents". This genre contrasted with the main tradition of the novel, which realistically depict life. These works frequently, but not exclusively, take the form of the historical novel. Walter Scott describes romance as a "kindred term", and many European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo".

References