Customer Reviews

Iodine: A Novel

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(35)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Summary, no spoilers:

This novel is about a young woman named Trace Pennington, who is at the top of her class at a small 4 year college. We know she is smart, beautiful, and mentally ill - she is the ultimate unreliable narrator.

Throughout the pages of this beautifully written novel, we find out that Trace has had a horribly abusive childhood, although we are never sure of just what happened because we are hearing about this from her point of view. What we learn of her past is dreamlike, and in fact it's often hard to distinguish fact from fantasy.

Trace (who makes up the name Ianthe), meets and falls in love with her college professor, a much older man with a mysterious past and secrets of his own. With him in her life, she learns how to face some of the horrors from her past.

This was a very different kind of reading experience for me. The writing was gorgeous, and evocative, and I came away feeling like I had truly entered the mind of a person who suffers from psychosis - which in turn left me feeling somewhat disorientated.

Because you learn the facts filtered through Trace, it's hard to know what is real and what's not, and for that reason, this book may not be for everyone. I do not recommend this book to those who like their mysteries neatly resolved, or dislike novels that employ stream of consciousness.

Recommended, with the reservations expressed above.

There is a certain type of reader who doesn't mind so much what he reads about so long as it's well written. I'm not quite there, but I certainly can appreciate the fluidity of this author's prose. The cover is full of quotes about her genius etc., however, and, well, I'm not quite there either.

The plot, such as it is, concerns a college psych student, I think, who is more brilliant than the other students and most of the professors, I think. She has a sister who's messed up on meth, I think, and a best friend whose husband beats her. I think.

The problem is that the novel "Iodine" continuously slips in and out of dream states, journal entries, delusions, and reality. I think. There is so much slippage that it's hard to tell. The writing is peppered with references to mythological characters and the fathers of modern psychoanalysis....well, not so much peppered as smothered.

For me it's all too much. Now, if you are a female college student who has been taken with the study of same, this book may be right up your alley. For me it was a struggle to finish, and the payoff (did that really happen or was she delusional again?) not worth the ride. But I'll give you this: Her command of the language is a wonderful thing to behold. If only it meant something....

Trace (a faint copy, a minute amount) Pennington is also Ianthe (violet, handmaiden of Persephone, the pure soul visited by Queen Mab) Covington, and both are brilliant and mad, in the classical literary Bertha Rochester madwoman-in-the-attic sense. Trace is fleeing a horrific childhood, and as Ianthe, she falls in love with her professor, Jacob (who labored fourteen years to win the woman he loved) Matthias. But her carefully constructed world is slowly unraveling, and we the readers must try to follow Trace/Ianthe through the labyrinth of her own mind as past and present interweave themselves, until one pulled thread threatens to topple the entire structure. (Could I have mixed one more metaphor in there?)

Other reviewers have gotten caught up in trying to separate what is "real" and what is Trace's psychosis, to figure out what "really" happened to her. I think this is missing the point; in a sense, everything in the book - every fantasy, every hallucination, every dream, every strange visitor in the night - "happened." Sure, some of them only happened in the far reaches of Trace's troubled mind, in the locked closet of Bluebeard's to which only she holds the key, while some of them took place in the outside, observable world. So what? You could try to parse out past from present, physical from psychical, all day long - and you probably won't be able to stop yourself from trying - but insofar as this is Trace's story, her perceptions and her experiences are what matters.

Now, that's not to say that you can just accept everything at face value here. Obviously, Trace is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and it is, on some level, important to try to peel back the layers of metaphor with which she has constructed her own reality. Thus, when she abandons her dog to go live with Jacob, she's not really "abandoning" her "dog." And when her childhood friend claims to have been abducted and impregnated by aliens, it's not really her "friend" who was taken by "aliens." Part of the joy of this book is piecing together the connections Trace makes in her own mind, the way she incorporates psychoanalytic theory, Jungian symbols, literary allusions, and a hundred other tiny references into a long and complicated narrative which she calls her own life.

Did I mention that Trace/Ianthe is brilliant? Another of the thrills of "Iodine" is the way, as Ianthe, she quietly skewers the pretentious, self-absorbed culture of academia. Some passages were so wickedly funny they made me snort my free-trade organic soy milk double-caff latte all over my copy of "The Chalice and the Blade." Her descriptions of a stuffy psych prof and a women's studies guru are spot-on. Ianthe may be crazy, but she ain't stupid, as the saying goes. And the irony of a young women suffering from mental illness who is obsessed with the works of Jung and Hillman - even to the point of incorporating their theories into her delusions - is delicious.

Normally I can't stand books that are essentially novel-length character studies. But "Iodine" was so fascinating, so complex, that upon finishing the final page I immediately turned back to the beginning and read it again. This is one of those too-rare books that will probably never stop yielding up surprises, that will only get richer and deeper with each subsequent reading. "Iodine" is not for everyone, but I for one loved it.

Haven Kimmel's recent novel, "Iodine" was a difficult to book to read concerning both its subject matter and the style in which it was presented. And I have to admit that the subject matter really isn't to my taste, but Kimmel made a good attempt at depicting the protagonist's journey from reality to her own fantasy, and hence her mental disturbance. The mental pathways, thoughts and fantasies of the protagonist, Trace, were a often muddled, but I'm sure this was to elucidate the character's acute intelligence and mental disturbance from her own perspective. But how could Trace tell her own story if she is uncertain of her own reality. Unfortunately, Trace's break from reality wasn't quite sharp enough. A more important flaw in this book was that I really didn't care about Trace or her family and friends, but kept reading to give a fair review, and learn what happened in her past that formed a human being that most people like to pretend doesn't exist. I kept wishing I had more sympathy for the characters but I simply didn't.

In "Iodine," Kimmel shows that she understands the English language and can write, but at times this was painfully obvious. I felt as if all she learned about literature, greek mythology and archetypal psychology were crammed into this short novel. It was at times self-conscious and pedantic. However, if you are interested in this genre, that of the complexity, idiosyncrasies and the iodine of human psychosis, then you may well enjoy this book. In the end, I found it to be one of promise but fell short of delivering a great story.

Iodine is the perfect example of a book that should have been a blockbuster that ended up being an excruciatingly bad read.

I'm not sure how many of the hundred or so dangling, 'maybe they were real, maybe they weren't' plotlines I can even go into without spoiling for future readers, but let me say that by the end of the book, I was wondering if I were losing my mind.

Kimmel is undoubtedly amazingly talented. From a purely clinical perspective, this should have been a masterpiece. Her writing is evocative, and she really is masterful at bringing emotions alive on the page. But cramming a hundred emotions onto one page, even when we know the character has a mental illness is not a pleasant reading experience. Kimmel jumps all over time and place - at one point, we've lost four years right along with Trace/Iolanthe.

The whole aliens/demon cult thing was bad enough, but the incest line of things was just weird as heck. The back blurb of the book promises Iolanthe finds love with Jacob, but it's wrapped up and convoluted with so many other things, it was hard to find from either of them.

As I said, technically, a flawlessly written book that should win those stuffy awards that authors give themselves. But to an average Jane reader like me, this was a read that made me want my three hours back.

Iodine is very well written. Kimmel's brilliant yet troubled Trace (her name in itself an allusion to copying or mimicking) is an engaging and curious character, one that constantly makes you want to know more. Her journey into herself is very well done, and the writing is almost lyrical, almost poetic.

However, what gets in the way of all of this is the confusion or doubt regarding what is perception, what is reality, and what is psychologically constructed from whole cloth. This type of playful narrative is always a good hook, but can become overwhelming and anti-climactic when the truth behind the chaos is never fully revealed.

The book, in short, is beautiful and brilliant, but comes nowhere close to offering the reader any truly satisfying closure at the end.

This book illustrates what should be an obvious truth: that bad things happen when people read too much theory and don't laugh at it enough. Haven Kimmel has written at least one other wonderful, funny, unpretentious book, A Girl Named Zippy. But this one is pretentious and bad. Apparently the idea was to illustrate the archetypal theories of James Hillman. I've never read Hillman, but I've read Freud, Jung, and Northrop Frye, other theorists of the archetypal that she actually quotes more than she does Hillman. And I still can't figure out this crazy story.

It seems to be about a girl named either Tracey or Ianthe, who may or may not have had sex with her father. Fine, I could deal with ambiguous incest in Faulkner. But also, she may or may not have shot him and her brother and their dog, and been caught by the sheriff right afterwards, but not prosecuted. Instead she's in college, and she's a star, up until the time that she initiates an affair with a professor, who seems to be a jerk, but maybe not. Anyway she drops out in order to carry on this affair and marry him, just short of graduating summa cum laude. But this loss is not greatly lamented.

The dialogue between the protagonist and her professor lover is unbelievably stilted, academic, and silly, and it's the low point of the whole book. The professor may or may not have murdered his former wife and baby. Ianthe and the professor get married, for four months or four years.

To make up for the silly academic life scenes, there is a vivid picture of trailer trash life, with abduction by aliens, ritual Satanic abuse, crystal meth dealing, foster care, dirty trailers, and the whole sad rural working class poverty scene. Her description of this is the high point of the book. She knows it well, it seems.

If you can tolerate not knowing what happened, you might like this book. It's experimental all right, but not successfully, in my opinion.

Haven Kimmel is a brilliant writer, there is no doubt about that. She's trying something very different in Iodine, taking her readers on a mythical nightmare glide through a world of madness. There is a literary and psychoanalytic backstory and framework here, so that those who are fans of Freud, Jung and James Hillman, whom Kimmel specifically calls out in the ackowledgments, may find specific ways to admire this literary achievement that elude the average reader (including me).

Some narrators are unreliable. Iodine's aptly named, deeply troubled Trace lives in a disturbing world of her own. Iodine may be an artistically accurate portrayal of a splintered mind, but experiencing Trace's mindset was absolutely exhausting, and this book was just not to my taste at all. As one of the book's reviews said, the main character's "identity, past and present are repeatedly called into question." This just did not leave enough ground for me, as a reader, to stand on. Much like the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive the hallucinations did not create a coherent story, and the "big reveal" did not bring it all together into a satisfying whole. Although I have loved many of Haven Kimmel's books, Iodine created a journey that I was just not prepared to accompany her on.

Trust me, if you can make it to the end of IODINE, you'll find it to have been a fascinating and VERY frustrating read. This is the sort of book that stubbornly refuses to provide you with neat, tidy answers. You may think you understand the major events of the book at the end...but you'll also doubt that understanding.

This is because of the nature of the narrator of the book. I truly hesitate to give away very much, but I guess I should reveal a few details. We are presented initially with the character of Trace, a young woman living on her own in an abandoned farmhouse with just her dog. She is deliberately hiding from the world, in particular, it would seem, from her parents. She is also a brilliant student at the local college, but is known there by her assumed name, Ianthe. We see that Trace/Ianthe has an amazing mind and a vivid writing style (much of the book is presented in the form of her "dream journals," which are some stream-of-consciousness observations about Trace's past, primarily.

We come to suspect that Trace may not be in the best mental health. Her memories seem spotty, at best. The lifestyle she's chosen to live seems to be unnecessarily secluded. Yet she also seems almost unnaturally gifted in her field of study, which is some kind of mixture of literature/psychology, based around the study and understanding of archetypes. She knows every myth ever laid down, it appears. She's also extremely well versed in the works of Freud, Jung, Hillman and others who focused so much on archetypes and symbols in their psychoanalysis. It's a fair guess that she may be smarter than her instructors.

The book jacket tells us that we are faced with an "unreliable narrator." This is certainly true, and this makes the book frustrating. We feel as though we are needing to piece together a puzzle...one that sorts Trace's impressions, recollections and faded half-memories from the truth. And this is no easy task. So Trace's past is a mystery...a mystery with many tantalizing clues, but a mystery nonetheless.

Her present is a little more accessible and linear. It is also somewhat less interesting, because author Haven Kimmel spends A LOT of time discussing the myths and archetypes that Trace/Ianthe is so interested in. And unless you love this stuff, and already have a basic understanding, you'll have a hard time with some of these passages...many of which cover several pages. I read them all, but was deeply uninterested in them and felt needlessly battered by them. What would make the writer think that we needed these mini-lectures, delivered in Trace's stream-of-consciousness style? While I have no doubt that her observations are astute and bear greatly on understanding Trace's mindset...I won't pretend that I found them enlightening at all, and I'm sure most would feel the same.

Kimmel is a very good writer. Some of her passages are amazingly well-observed. There is an early "scene" when Ianthe reluctantly goes to a party. We can see VERY clearly just what kind of party it is, the kinds of pretentious people who are attending, we can almost smell the apartment, the food, the drugs. It was highly evocative and gave me an appreciation of Kimmel's abilities.

Midway through the book, Trace/Ianthe enters into a very passionate relationship. The storytelling become more straightforward at this point, and we finally begin to really relate to Trace. She seems less "crazy." But has she become more reliable, or are her delusions simply so vivid now that her depictions of them seem real?

I've left out a lot of details. Trace has very complex feelings about her mother (a religious fanatic?), her father (who may or may not have sexually abused her) and an older brother. She also visits an old childhood friend who has some unusual mental illnesses of her own.

The book is a compelling examination of one person's very particular mental illness, and their mechanisms for coping. From that standpoint, IODINE is remarkable and fascinating.

From a narrative standpoint, though, the very success of the depiction of Trace's illness makes following the events of the book a very dicey proposition.

If this were all, I'd give the book 4 stars (the writing is VERY good) and say "read it...just be prepared for frustration." However, because of the lengthy and ultimately boring "scholarly" sections (which to me seem to do little more than show how erudite author Kimmel thinks she is), I'm downgrading the book to 3 stars, and choosing neither to recommend nor steer you away. I hope my description of the content and tone of the book will help you decide whether to give it a try. I don't regret reading it myself, but I also could have lived my life happily never having encountered it.

Maybe I didn't like this book because I have an uncle who is paranoid schizophrenic. I spent years listening to his odd thought processes and they were nothing like this. Of course, he wasn't a brilliant human being blessed with a facility with words. He wrote Tarzan stories and didn't understand why he couldn't get them published. Of course, he also worked for the CIA as a covert operative. At least I understood his craziness; it was the mundane kind.

Trace's (or Ianthe's) craziness is supposed to be brilliant rather than mundane, but for me, it was a long stream of consciousness rant that started in a black hole and went nowhere from there. Sort of like the character being in love with the sound of her own voice.

Other reviewers loved this book and the author certainly has a noteworthy command of the English language. But this main character is too precious, too caught up in her brilliant craziness. I know I'm seeing this through the filter of my own experience with true mental illness, but I found no insights here. I didn't feel better after I read the book. I pretty much felt nothing.

This probably was the wrong book for me, so I'll let it go at that.