I will get this out of the way up front: I did not understand Ice. I will get this out of the way, too: I don’t think the novel wants you to understand it. Not in a straightforward one to one modern commercial fiction plot way, anyways: “And then I went here and fought these monsters with thinly veiled DnD mechanics’ etc etc. Some novels are for linear, literalistic storytelling. Some novels, however, exist in the dream space. They make use of surrealism, destabilizing tactics, the uncanny, and the strange. Ice is the second kind of novel. And while I did not understand it, I did love it.
On a straightforward level, Ice is about a man who travels a dying earth, searching for the silver-haired woman he is obsessed with. Also, a nuclear war has set off an ice age and glaciers are slowly crushing everyone to death. But also, it is an allegory for addiction. But also, and while I cannot find any criticism to this effect I am convinced of my interpretation, an allegory of a woman trying to reclaim her life from a history of abuse and trauma. There is also no small amount of commentary on Cold War paranoia, denialism in the face of catastrophe, and all the other things you’d expect for a novel written in 1967 about the end of the world.
A note on genre: I do consider this science fiction. Johnathan Lethem, who wrote the introduction of my edition, disagrees that it should be categorized this way, or “categorized at all (viii). ” Wikipedia claims it is “science fiction, Nouveau roman,and slipstream fiction.” I think today we would publish it either as “literary science fiction” or “weird fiction with a sci-fi bent.” And that last one is probably most accurate. My point is, I see no reason why an experimental stream of consciousness novel cannot be science fiction. Something does not cease to have literary merit just because it’s been filed under ‘nerd shit.’ That should be decided by the quality of the writing, not the genre it’s published under. Literary criticism should not be beholden to marketing terms.
But this is a weird little novel. None of the characters have names. Not the narrator, not the woman who is the object of his obsessions, who is simply ‘the girl.’ The man who our narrator fights for the girl’s ownership is simply ‘the warden.’ This is the sort of thing I love, and endlessly fascinates me. When names are elided in a narrative in favor of titles and epithets, everything takes on a certain mystical quality, as if we are existing in a space of fable.
And I do not deny that this is an addiction allegory. It appears to be common knowledge among scholars of her work that Kavan was addicted to heroin, and institutionalized for it more than once. And the book bears this out: a man pursues the objects of his obsession to the ends of the earth, ruining them both. “I was too depressed to keep on talking. The situation was hopeless. I needed the girl, I could not live without her. (101)” He says, after 100 pages of claiming he just wants to see her, or speak to her, or help her. “He wanted me to broadcast propaganda for him, which I agreed to do, if he would do something for me. ‘Still the same thing?’ ‘Yes.'(109)” comes a late exchange with the warden, with all the energy of a dealer you have not seen in a while. His presence leaves her ’emaciated, the flesh seemed to melt off her bones. Her hair lost its glitter, too heavy, weighed her head down (129).” It is not difficult to see where critics and scholars are reading the addiction allegory. It is there, and I do see it.
But I do see something else. And I know, I know. ‘Of course you would read this as a sexual abuse metaphor.’ You think. And I know that coming from me in particular this is cliche and unsurprising. But despite being a married woman, she is always referred to as as ‘the girl.’ Kavan takes special care to mention she has a child’s frame, wears child’s shoes, her small shoulders, her small breasts. Her wrists constantly have red marks from being bound together. One of the earliest descriptions of her is: ‘Her face wore its victiom;s look, which was of course psychological, the result of injuries she recieved in childhood; I saw it as the faintest possibility of bruising on the extremely delicate , fine, white skin in the regions of her eyes and mouth (13)” There is a potentially hallucinated rape scene that begins ‘Forced since childhood into a victim’s pattern of thought and behavior….(37).” The narrator is in love with her purity and yet, one of the times she dies, it is at the hands of ‘a milky white fluid, moving among the debris….eating whatever came into contact with it (63).’ And at the end, when she finally gives in, it is because ‘Her part was to suffer; that was known and accepted….she knew she had been beaten before the start (173).”
It is not impossible to read the girl, the warden, and the narrator as all aspects of one person’s shattered psyche, the eternal victim and fawn response, the domineering, cruel voice in one’s head that demands you “be taught toughness, in life and in bed (153)”, and the dominant, every day self, who strives for normality and only manages to destroy itself by chasing one side or the other too hard, splintered by some central act of cruelty in one’s childhood that is only possible to gesture at with imagery of dragon sacrifices and ice apocalypses. Which is not to say Kavan was a victim of abuse, simply that I beleive the novel is a surrealistic work depicting the process of coming to terms with trauma in a allegorical fashion.
I do recommend this. I think most people will hate it, but I do recommend it. If ‘surrealist allegorical sci-fi’ sounds like your bag, you’d enjoy this. If you’re a current fan of Brian Evenson. If you found this trying to find weird fiction that is also sci-fi. If you’re a literary type who wants to get into genre fiction. Of if you just think our tastes align. If not you can probably skip it but, give it a shot. The prose is beautiful and endlessly fascinating. If you do, drop me a line. Just don’t yell at me too hard if you hate it. I did warn you.
Signing off,
Marlowe
Marlowe Writes 