Reprints of early work by a muchinstitutionalized drugaddicted Englishwriter who died in 1968 apparently of a heroin overdose and whose lastgenerally available ... » 

Reprints of early work by a muchinstitutionalized drugaddicted Englishwriter who died in 1968 apparently of a heroin overdose and whose lastgenerally available work was the posthumous Julia and the Bazooka 1975 agrouping of twelve angles on a tormented consciousness. Similarly the AsylumPiece collection originally published in 1940 the first and perhaps bestwork that Kavan did under her own name rather than the Helen Woods pseudonym offers 21 sketches of a tormented soul in and out of asylum fantasies ofpersecution interminable hours galling humiliations. And strangely enoughthe matteroffact experiences outside the asylum among decent people arefar more wrenching than the more selfconsciously evocative recreations ofinstitutional misery. A minor embarrassment at a restaurant I began towonder as I have wondered ever since whether the good opinion of anybody inthe whole world is worth all I have had to suffer and must still go onsuffering for how long oh for how long.? Sleep Has His House originallypublished in 1948 is a grim childhood memoir that has none of that matteroffact chill straining instead for a dreamlike quality often beautiful butgenerally less effective. At her best Kavan is a powerful recorder of plainspoken pain elsewhere the selfpity and poetic rollings add up to banaloverkill as in much of Joyce Carol Oates work. But in any case the reallifebasis for this dark bitter prose generates a degree of fascination and forthose interested in the literature of drugheightened or drugdamaged mindsthis will certainly be required reading. Kirkus Reviews «