Prerna's Reviews > The Ice Palace

Maybe it's because I've lived most of my life in regions of tropical monsoon climate, but I love the cold, the snow, the blizzards, the ice structures, the frozen lakes, the endless white landscapes. In theory, I'm completely besotted with it.

But beneath all the iciness within this book is a barrage of emotions, unresolved tensions, and portent desire. It is in the deadlock of death that we confront the reverie of life, it is in the imaginary that we seek the real, as with Unn in this book, who senses her innocent malaise in a severe hypothermic state and under the gaze of large, monstrous eye that she can no longer tell herself is unreal.

On the other side is Siss, with her remorse, grief and the drive to 'undo.' Siss tries to impose order onto her grief by imitating the desired, perhaps she hopes to transform her very longing into a real entity, perhaps she wants to morph into the desired through pure remembrance and repetitions.

I read this book while on a beautiful train ride and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. It left me with a deep longing for the cold and surreal.