I came to this novel after being mildly disappointed by'Ice'.. (I have since revised my impression of 'Ice'after reading it asecond time.) Where as 'Ice' is a cold and bitter novel about futile struggle 'Eagle's Nest' is hot, exotic and hallucinogenic. The naturally occurring 'drugs' that distort reality from time to time in the heat of the remote location our hero has fled to, create an eerie and lasting vision. And the flight from this place of apparent refuge returns the reader to the cold reality of everyday life - for me, with quite a jolt.

The writer of this novel is better known as Anna Kavan - the name of a character in one of her earlier novels that she later took for herself. There must be some hidden significance in that! This is probably the strongest modern novel I have read. The start is captivating and brilliantly exposed, the middle is a bit flat and rather remorseless, but the ending is electric. At long last the principle character feels an iota of remorse for her actions against an unlikeable victim of her actions. I wonder how a woman could have written this novel - is it a brilliant psychological expose - almost a thriller - or is it a wonderfully personal account of a life written with startling naivete?

When I first read 'Ice' (from Brian Aldiss' published recommendation) I enjoyed it but didn't think it was great. It seemed to me to be about Kavan's struggle with drugs - a struggle she couldn't win. But this was a bit remote for me since I have never taken drugs. Some years later I read another Kavan novel - 'The Eagle's Nest'. This is a hot novel in comparison to the coldness of 'Ice' and, perhaps, more akin to my own personality. Anyway, it encouraged me to read 'Ice' again and now I saw it as so much stronger because it's (to me anyway) not about a futile struggle against drug addiction but something much more cosmic - the futile struggle that we all embark on against death.

I have read more Kavan since then - 'A Scarcity of Love' is great. 'Let Me Alone' is something else again. Will I ever dare reread it?

I read Ice several years ago, and I recall it as a very intense experience, perhaps beacuse Kavan had altered her mind considerably through drugs by the time she wrote it and her own perception of reality and emotions was equally intense and she had to reduce it to the bare minimum before she could deal with it.

The story takes place in a future ice-age, and the text is as cold as the title. An incessant, obsessive search for a woman is what I remember best of the story, and that would not in itself make it very special. I think it is the treatment of an ardent passion with ice-coldness what makes Kavan a winner.

How can one not discuss Anna Kavan first when discussing her work?Ice was last published novel in her lifetime, and also her masterpiece.The plot is quite simply, two men pursue a women who they constantly victimise, against a background of universal annihilation and destruction.However the book defies description, so surrealistic is the prose and so profound is the metaphor.Anna Kavan was a heroin addict for over thirty years, and had suffered two mental breakdowns which resulted in her being institutionalized. However she was a consummate artist who re-invented herself successfully as a avant garde writer (now sadly neglected). Ice is her crowning achievemnt,read it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A novella and nine short stories comprise this book. They were collected from the papers of Anna Kavan after her death in 1968. The novella is said to have been distilled from 90,000 to 30,000 words. On the whole the collection is an admirable showcase for the writer's talent.

Whether Kavan or her literary executors are responsible for the novella's weak architecture, I don't know. I refer to the way the novella hopscotchs from one viewpoint to another. Is the story first person or third? The same confusion repeats in "Tiny Thing." John Gardner the novelist warned fiction writers about interrupting the wakening dream that is a reader's collaboration with a story. Experimentation is fine in fiction but the verities of clarity and coherence still need to be observed. A reader may not know where he'll end up in Lawrence Stern, Kafka, or Joyce but he certainly knows where he is.

The inspiration for this tale of a woman's unsuccessful search for happin! ess with a husband and then a lover is the author's own divorce and a subsequent companionship with another man. There is a saying that everyone has at least one story in him or her. That's probably true. It does not follow that every one can make fiction from an experience. Anna Kavan could.

Two facts influence most of the stories, one geographic, the social. They are set in the English milieu; they were written during the collegiate turbulent nineteen sixties. Some embody student attitudes of the period: struggle between generations, enmity toward machines, expectation that paradise lies somewhere beyond Earth. Readers are often dropped in a bleak future. In all there is the Kavan prose style, a jeweled examination of people and places.

For most of her writing career Kavan was a drug addict. Other writers suffered a similar affliction: Coleridge in the Romantic era, Capote in modern times. What astounds about Anna Kavan is that her talent did not abate. Beset ! by so debilitating a habit, she continued to produce fascin! ating novels and short stories. Were she free of addiction, would her works be more numerous, as probing? A question not easily answered. What we have, though, is enough to wish we had more.

Like life, this novel shows the strengths and weaknesses of people as exposed by the vagaries of life. Some strengths are good - some are selfish and unforgiveable. Some weknesses are awful flaws, but others are precautions that help an individual avoid greater disasters. The characters in this novel are fascinating. I kept hoping I would find one I could identify with unequivocally, but found myself cringeing at some of the outcomes and then forgiving the character because no decisions are ever made without reason and feeling.

I came to this novel from several other novels by Anna Kavan that I hold in very high esteem. This novel doesn't disappoint, but doesn't quite reach the exulted heights of 'Let Me Alone'. Kavan's fresh writing style has not dated at all and its vivid imagery takes one back to the time about which she writes, and the place as well. But its in the charcaters and their interactions that Kavan shows her true insights.

When i got this book, i thought it would be about Prue, Piper, and Pheobe. But as it turned out, it wasn't. I thought it was okay, but i would reccomend it for charmed fans who are not really "INTO" charmed.