Night and Day, 08 Nov 2002
Kavan's unique writing style is somewhere between night and day, dream and reality, madness and sanity, delerious and sober. This is her best work, with the setting and characters balanced perfectly and yet contrasted against each other. It is surprising that Kavan is not a better known writer in popular circles. If you have never read her before - read Who Are You ? . . .

Night and Day, 08 Nov 2002
Kavan's unique writing style is somewhere between night and day, dream and reality, madness and sanity, delerious and sober. This is her best work, with the setting and characters balanced perfectly and yet contrasted against each other. It is surprising that Kavan is not a better known writer in popular circles. If you have never read her before - read Who Are You ? . . .

A Great But Neglected Pioneering Woman Writer, 28 Feb 2001
I remain amazed at the limited amount of interest in Anna Kavan's works today, but am delighted that Peter Owen is reprinting this book and others. She lead the life of an independent woman, though struggling throughout with heroin addiction and episodes of dark despair that sent her into psychiatric facilities. Hence the title of Asylum Piece, which is a series of sketches of life in an asylum, detailed in her own introspective though elegant prose. This book is less toward the surreal/speculative side of her work in titles like Ice or Julia and the Bazooka, and also not quite like the more Virginia Woolfish psychological portraits of books like A Charmed Circle. Asylum Piece is a good first book for discovering Ms. Kavan, as it tends to come in short, poetic bursts, but no less rich in both style and observation for brevity.

Night and Day, 08 Nov 2002
Kavan's unique writing style is somewhere between night and day, dream and reality, madness and sanity, delerious and sober. This is her best work, with the setting and characters balanced perfectly and yet contrasted against each other. It is surprising that Kavan is not a better known writer in popular circles. If you have never read her before - read Who Are You ? . . .

A Great But Neglected Pioneering Woman Writer, 28 Feb 2001
I remain amazed at the limited amount of interest in Anna Kavan's works today, but am delighted that Peter Owen is reprinting this book and others. She lead the life of an independent woman, though struggling throughout with heroin addiction and episodes of dark despair that sent her into psychiatric facilities. Hence the title of Asylum Piece, which is a series of sketches of life in an asylum, detailed in her own introspective though elegant prose. This book is less toward the surreal/speculative side of her work in titles like Ice or Julia and the Bazooka, and also not quite like the more Virginia Woolfish psychological portraits of books like A Charmed Circle. Asylum Piece is a good first book for discovering Ms. Kavan, as it tends to come in short, poetic bursts, but no less rich in both style and observation for brevity.

Liberating in its bizarreness, 30 Dec 2007
'Ice' is a wonderfully strange and surreal book. It is set in an apocalyptic time, where some sort of ice age is descending upon the Earth and war rages throughout the world. No time is wasted with explanations, everything is carefully vague and non-specific. Even the characters remain unnamed.

Completely free of all the usual conventions, reading 'Ice' is rather liberating. There is no need to worry about the plot, about characterisation, about realism. Things just are as they are, and you read in the moment, enjoying the writing as it stands without thinking about what comes before and after. And the writing is good enough to enjoy for its own sake.

Some readers may wish to find allegories or deeper meaning in the story, but I preferred not to. Certainly there would be material for discussion in the book, although Kavan is so carefully vague, avoiding any sort of explanations, that almost any interpretation could be validly argued. I liked the fact that I didn't feel as though I needed to understand or find an underlying 'message' in the work.

Sometimes 'Ice' is confusing, with dream-like sequences that occur without any warning or explanation, and it is often impossible to know if the action being described is 'real time' or has moved seamlessly into fantasy, dream, prophecy or flashback. It can be disconcerting but it works surprisingly well once you accept that it is a feature of the book.

As long as you are prepared for its strangeness, I think 'Ice' is an excellent book to read. Expect to be confused and occasionally lose the thread. Don't expect to find explanations, a set plot, or realistic events. Once you understand the ground rules of 'Ice' (i.e. there are no rules) you can sit back and enjoy the ride. I suspect that some people may dislike it - it is certainly disconcerting and unusual - but it's not a long book and I think it would be well worth a try for anyone who is prepared to read something a bit different.

If you enjoy 'Ice', I would recommend 'The Unconsoled' by Kazuo Ishiguro, and vice versa. It has the same sense of dream like surrealism and unreality.

Perfection, 26 Mar 2002
Forget plot, forget character, geography, politics, motivation, development.

This is a lengthy dream sequence - characters come and go, everything is fluid. The nature of the catastrophe becomes irrelevant - is this about holocaust? Gender? Opiates? Ecology?

<>

Strangely reminds me of Murukami

Night and Day, 08 Nov 2002
Kavan's unique writing style is somewhere between night and day, dream and reality, madness and sanity, delerious and sober. This is her best work, with the setting and characters balanced perfectly and yet contrasted against each other. It is surprising that Kavan is not a better known writer in popular circles. If you have never read her before - read Who Are You ? . . .

A Great But Neglected Pioneering Woman Writer, 28 Feb 2001
I remain amazed at the limited amount of interest in Anna Kavan's works today, but am delighted that Peter Owen is reprinting this book and others. She lead the life of an independent woman, though struggling throughout with heroin addiction and episodes of dark despair that sent her into psychiatric facilities. Hence the title of Asylum Piece, which is a series of sketches of life in an asylum, detailed in her own introspective though elegant prose. This book is less toward the surreal/speculative side of her work in titles like Ice or Julia and the Bazooka, and also not quite like the more Virginia Woolfish psychological portraits of books like A Charmed Circle. Asylum Piece is a good first book for discovering Ms. Kavan, as it tends to come in short, poetic bursts, but no less rich in both style and observation for brevity.

Liberating in its bizarreness, 30 Dec 2007
'Ice' is a wonderfully strange and surreal book. It is set in an apocalyptic time, where some sort of ice age is descending upon the Earth and war rages throughout the world. No time is wasted with explanations, everything is carefully vague and non-specific. Even the characters remain unnamed.

Completely free of all the usual conventions, reading 'Ice' is rather liberating. There is no need to worry about the plot, about characterisation, about realism. Things just are as they are, and you read in the moment, enjoying the writing as it stands without thinking about what comes before and after. And the writing is good enough to enjoy for its own sake.

Some readers may wish to find allegories or deeper meaning in the story, but I preferred not to. Certainly there would be material for discussion in the book, although Kavan is so carefully vague, avoiding any sort of explanations, that almost any interpretation could be validly argued. I liked the fact that I didn't feel as though I needed to understand or find an underlying 'message' in the work.

Sometimes 'Ice' is confusing, with dream-like sequences that occur without any warning or explanation, and it is often impossible to know if the action being described is 'real time' or has moved seamlessly into fantasy, dream, prophecy or flashback. It can be disconcerting but it works surprisingly well once you accept that it is a feature of the book.

As long as you are prepared for its strangeness, I think 'Ice' is an excellent book to read. Expect to be confused and occasionally lose the thread. Don't expect to find explanations, a set plot, or realistic events. Once you understand the ground rules of 'Ice' (i.e. there are no rules) you can sit back and enjoy the ride. I suspect that some people may dislike it - it is certainly disconcerting and unusual - but it's not a long book and I think it would be well worth a try for anyone who is prepared to read something a bit different.

If you enjoy 'Ice', I would recommend 'The Unconsoled' by Kazuo Ishiguro, and vice versa. It has the same sense of dream like surrealism and unreality.

Perfection, 26 Mar 2002
Forget plot, forget character, geography, politics, motivation, development.

This is a lengthy dream sequence - characters come and go, everything is fluid. The nature of the catastrophe becomes irrelevant - is this about holocaust? Gender? Opiates? Ecology?

<>

Strangely reminds me of Murukami

Kavan's masterpiece, 04 Dec 2003
Anna Kavan is my favourite author.

Ice seems to get the attention of the critics - but I believe Kavan's greatest work to be this 1956 novel.

Told in the style of a conventional romance, the book traces the way the emotional development of a family is stunted across three generations by transmission of problems down the maternal line.

The tale is a sad one - a bit of a tear-jerker.

None of the characters span the book - but there is more work put into developing them - and the result is more human and emotional than many of Anna's other works. The book does a good job of illustrating frustration, jealousy and pride.

Readers who have also read Ice will see hints of the characters inner worlds in some of the descriptive passages - a sign of what was to come.