Kavan, Anna (Pseudonym of Helen Ferguson Woods) (Vol. 5) | Kavan, Anna (Pseudonym of Helen Ferguson Woods) 1904–1968
Kavan, Anna (Pseudonym of Helen Ferguson Woods) 1904–1968
Born in France, Anna Kavan lived in the United States, Burma, Norway, New Zealand, and England. She was a novelist and short story writer. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.; obituary, Vols. 25-28.)
Anna Kavan's novel, A Scarcity of Love, is written with alarming intensity. Its fairy-tale touches and allegorical hints, combined with a structure which seems dictated by the progress of obsession rather than the conventions of a plot, suggest extraordinary violence and disorganization of feeling.
The story starts in a castle and ends with a dreamlike suicide in a jungle river, and the characters are seen clearly outlined, like a child's drawings, against frozen mountains, lush tropical gardens, vast mirrored hotels. At the centre of the story is a snow queen woman, who rejects her baby, forces her husband to suicide, and devotes the rest of her life to the...
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