I read the award-winning Ice (a must read SF novel) last year and I was completely blown away by the unique hallucinatory journey through a frozen post-apocalyptic world in search of a young girl (who is Kavan herself). It was one of the most haunting literary experiences in all my years of reading. The heartbreaking sadness of the author was almost palpable.
A few weeks ago I worked through Asylum Piece, a collection of short stories written after she was admitted to a mental institution suffering an opiate-induced nervous breakdown. Kavan was an incurable heroin addict, paralyzed by severe bouts of depression and attempted suicide on several occasions. AP is just a masterful Kafkaesque examination of one person's gradual slide into insanity. The events in each story propel the protagonist inexorably through initial apprehension about the world, baseless fear, terrifying hallucinations and on toward a crippling self-fueling cycle of paranoia which is impossible to escape out of. It's a genuinely distressing piece of work - with not a trace of sentiment - written in a beautifully economical prose style.
I've got a couple more of her books in my pending list at Amazon. I can't wait to get stuck into them. Has anyone else read Kavan? She's not a massively well-known author, but those that have read her books seem unanimous in admiration.
A few weeks ago I worked through Asylum Piece, a collection of short stories written after she was admitted to a mental institution suffering an opiate-induced nervous breakdown. Kavan was an incurable heroin addict, paralyzed by severe bouts of depression and attempted suicide on several occasions. AP is just a masterful Kafkaesque examination of one person's gradual slide into insanity. The events in each story propel the protagonist inexorably through initial apprehension about the world, baseless fear, terrifying hallucinations and on toward a crippling self-fueling cycle of paranoia which is impossible to escape out of. It's a genuinely distressing piece of work - with not a trace of sentiment - written in a beautifully economical prose style.
I've got a couple more of her books in my pending list at Amazon. I can't wait to get stuck into them. Has anyone else read Kavan? She's not a massively well-known author, but those that have read her books seem unanimous in admiration.
