Customer Reviews

Asylum Piece

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dearest Anna,

I finished your book about madness, about inner poverty, about redemption and the mystical obsession with death. There's a word to describe books such as these, but I fail to remember that word. Oh well, my review is nothing more than a large applause sign. Did you live this, or are you dreaming it all? I suppose that doesn't matter. I'm writing to say, thank you. Ms. Kavan, I understand.

I found this book in a lowly second-hand bookstore and it cost 50 pesos (less than 2 cents) back in 95 and found more than a bargain--a real find and a gem of a book. I've reread the book countless times and plugged friends to read it at the cost of our friendship. These are stories that will haunt you to go back and search for words you thought were there but were really between the lines and beneath the pages. These are evocations of both retchedness and humanity. I've never heard of Anna Kavan or any of her work, and people still raise eyebrows when I mention her name as one of my favorites. But this book will surely flee with me in case of a fire breakout. Nobody can take it away from me, here that? You can even ask my friend Chati.

I found this book in a lowly second-hand bookstore and it cost 50 pesos (less than 2 cents) back in 95 and found more than a bargain--a real find and a gem of a book. I've reread the book countless times and plugged friends to read it at the cost of our friendship. These are stories that will haunt you to go back and search for words you thought were there but were really between the lines and beneath the pages. These are evocations of both retchedness and humanity. I've never heard of Anna Kavan or any of her work, and people still raise eyebrows when I mention her name as one of my favorites. But this book will surely flee with me in case of a fire breakout. Nobody can take it away from me, here that? You can even ask my friend Chati.

If you have ever enjoyed Kavan's work, this book is a must read.If you own any of her work, this is a must buy.

Anna Kavan is one of my favourite writers - up there with Joseph Conrad, Philip Dick, George Eliot, W H Hudson.... 'Let Me Alone' (search for it by title at Amazon, not author - it appears under one of Kavan's other psuedonyms) is one of THE novels for me. 'A Scarcity of Love', 'Eagles Nest' and 'Ice' are all very strong novels too. But I was disappointed in this book. The chapters are so short and disconnected in characters if not in theme. I found it hard to identify with anything in the novel - collection of short stories, whatever this is supposed to be. I understand, of course, that no one character could have experienced all the bleak outcomes in these items. And yet I wonder if they are not all autobiographical in some way. Perhaps Anna Kavan did feel herself to be a victim of these dreadful fates.

By chance I started to re-read 'Valis' by Philip Dick as I read 'Asylum Piece'. In this novel Philip Dick does include autobiographical details exposed through both himself and an alter-ego, Horeselover (which is what Philip means in Greek) Fat (well, you can work that one out for yourself). I don't think that 'Valis' is the masterwork some people like to champion it as, but is engaging in a way that 'Asylum Piece' was not for me. (This despite there being some very unclear philosophising in 'Valis' - at least, it is unclear to me.) Now I know that Kavan, like Dick, can be a very engaging writer - but she fails this for me in this work.

And then there is the remorseless gloom of the thing. For me all of this was mastered by Schubert in the song cycle 'Winterreise', in which one individual does suffer greatly and is beaten down continually by nature which seems to taunt him. All the characters in 'Asylum Piece' suffer greatly, often at the hand of those who should love them most of all. But Schubert ends his song cycle with an extraordinary vision, that of the hurdy-gurdy man. This is someone even worse off than the hero of the song cycle and yet he is stoically going on, challenging nature, challenging fate, persisting in spite of it all. This vision gives me great courage in my life. 'Asylum Piece' offers no insight - it just catalogues misfortune and injustice.