A Scarcity of Love (Peter Owen Modern Classics) [Paperback]

Anna Kavan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0720613272 | ISBN-13: 978-0720613278

Rejection, betrayal and a girl's discovery of evil penetrate this strange, haunting novel by the author of Ice. Kavan discards such aids to realism as geography and mundane physical facts - even time seems to have halted in a menacing country of emotions where the very ground is uneasy with seismic threats. A Scarcity of Love tells the story of a young girl, rejected by her narcissistic and vengeful mother, whose life thereafter is a continuing series of betrayals that lead to the dead-end of madness and death. Like Sylvia Plath, Anna Kavan was capable of nearly perfect control over language as she describes, with impressive simplicity, the bizarre and hallucinatory landscape of derangement.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Belonging to the great subjective-feminine tradition (Woolf, Barnes, Nin) which has tried to give us a poetic notation of the female artist’s world."  —Lawrence Durrell, author, Justine

About the Author

Anna Kavan was one of the greatest unsung enigmas in 20th-century British literature. Born as Helen Ferguson, who lived a fraught childhood and two failed marriages led her to change her name to that of one of her characters. Despite struggling with mental illness and heroin addiction for most of her life, she was still able to write fiction that was as powerful and memorable as any English female writer of the last 150 years.

Product Details

• Paperback: 206 pages
• Publisher: Peter Owen Ltd (September 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0720613272
• ISBN-13: 978-0720613278
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,475,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No scarcity of talent, February 5, 2002

By 

A. G. Plumb "Greg Plumb" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Scarcity of Love (Paperback)

This novel was published in paperback with 'Let Me Alone', also by Anna Kavan. 'Let Me Alone' is such a staggering novel (despite some flat spots in the middle) that it took me a while to pluck up the courage to attack 'A Scarcity of Love'. 'A Scarcity of Love' is not as strong a novel as 'Let Me Alone'(for me it hardly could be) but it is very rewarding.

If you search for 'Let Me Alone' at Amazon.com you will not find it with the other Anna Kavan works. However, it is in the Amazon.com catalogue under the author's alternative - and very rarely used - earlier publishing name of Helen Woods Edmonds.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars surprising and wonderful, May 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Scarcity of Love (Paperback)

This novel was published in paperback with Let Me Alone. Let Me Alone is such a staggering novel (despite some flat spots in the middle) that it took me a while to pluck up the courage to attack Let Me Alone. Let Me Alone is not as good (for me it hardly could be) but it is very rewarding.

4.0 out of 5 stars A Special Find, May 13, 2006

By 

Kimberlee Catena (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Scarcity of Love - A Novel (Hardcover)

I found this at a little library on a give away shelf. I popped open the front sleeve and read that the writing was similar to that of Sylvia Plath. That is what had me interested, so I took it home and began to read it. It is true that there is similar styles. I enjoyed the book very much. :D