Iodine

by Haven Kimmel

Book Overview

#1 New York Time s bestselling author Haven Kimmel makes an exhilarating foray into psychological gothic territory with the electrifying story of a young woman emerging from layers of delusion,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416572848
• ISBN13: 9781416572848
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Good Read

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and might read it again fairly soon. The story is told partly in dreams so there are more layers to the story than I think I possibly caught the first time through. At the end, I found myself wondering if certain things in the dreams had meanings that I had missed. Although the story seems to be multi-layered, it is fairly easy to read and the plot is compelling. The main character is a young college student majoring in literature and taking courses having to do with archetypical applications. So there are a reasonable amount of musings on what different classics, mostly Greek, if I remember it right, mean, both published opinions and from the main character's opinions and written papers, (and possibly Kimmel's own). I think that might have been off-putting to some readers, but I found it fascinating. I don't think all aspects in the dreams necessarily mean deep psychological things, although the character speaks of Freud's work much, the character, and Kimmel herself, seem to be more taken with Jung's philosophies. I know little about either's work except that I think Freud believed dreams to be more pointedly meaningful. But Kimmel seems to simply let the dreams tell her heroine's feelings more than actual events. Actual events are explained openly. It is not too hard to figure out which events are actually happening and which ones are dreams, I didn't think. The dreams are weird as dreams get, and although the character's childhood is a bit weird, it's not that unusual. I think that is another thing some readers may have disliked - some seemed to feel her life was tragic and bizarre. I grew up right around the area Kimmel sets this story in - my Grandparents even lived in one of the towns she mentions, and nothing Kimmel describes is all that unusual - none of it. It's very realistic, and so is the main character. Eventually in the heroine's life, something more tragic than all that has gone before has happened and basically, she seems to be supressing the memory of it - that is the compelling thing that moves the story forward and you do finally find out what happened in the end. Interestingly, though, many smaller situations in the story are never resolved, just like in real life. Once the climax is had, Kimmel wraps the story up very quickly, which left me a bit unfulfilled, but I still give the book five stars for being a solid story, well-told, witty, and unique.

Well-paced psychological shocker

I admit to being a sucker for the unreliable narrator. I fall for them every time, never questioning their veracity. So, when the protagonist of "Iodine" started talking about her life, I believed every word as she drew me in to a trailer-trash world of guns, exorcism, child abuse, incest, and ETs. For a girl like Tracy Sue Pennington, it is easy to see why she wants to run away to college and remain anonymous, unfettered by family and known by only one friend. She lives alone in a drafty old farmhouse with an old dog and lets no one come near her. It comes as no surprise that she's fascinated by psychology and myth and goes into long and alluring tales of Carl Jung and the many myths of the Greeks--sometimes touching on the Egyptians. This is one damaged soul looking for a way to describe her aching world. Haven Kimmel's style can be confusing, but I found it seductive. Tracy alternates between her dream journal and accounts of real life. Often it's hard to tell where real life begins and where the dream stops. Or is she participating in a waking dream? For a while you think you know, until some schoolmates start calling her "Ianthe" and she doesn't correct them. The real-life construct starts jarring disturbingly with the dream world, as Tracy Sue also bumps roughly against Ianthe. Who is she really? To explain much more would ruin the story, but I must say that I found the build up to the end to be thrilling and then mind-boggling when the extent of the protagonist's castle of lies falls apart. There are moments I might have guessed glimpses of the truth, but never the whole thing. By the end, I was left almost panting from the sheer brilliance of the whole transformation. If there was any flaw, it was in the too frequent mentions of arcane Greek gods and goddesses. There's allusion in mythology, and then there's just Kimmel showing off. But on the whole, this was a marvelous book of twisted thought and misplaced identity, good as either a literary exercise or a mysterious visit into a mind burdened with several views of reality.

Psychological literary mystery

This is the kind of story that can't quite be explained to someone when they ask, "What is the story about?" It's a mystery, but we're not sure exactly what the mystery is until the very last chapter. And it's the kind of mystery that will make you want to re-read parts of the book to find the hints along the way that were in plain sight all along, if only you'd been paying attention to them. The novel follows Trace Pennington, who is an student of English literature. Told in the third person, the novel switches voice to the first person when we are reading from Trace's journal. But the effect isn't one of confusion; instead, it blurs the line between the first- and third-person narration. The author's craft here is manifest, because this change of viewpoint is both subtle and yet a strong reflection of other things that are going on in the story. Throughout the novel Trace thinks about literature and classical references to myths and archtypes. If you know anything about these themes, you will enjoy the references and find yourself wanting to look them up and delve deeper into the psyche of the protagonist. I enjoyed this aspect of the novel: that something deeper, more mysterious, was just over the horizon if I wanted to look for it. On the other hand, the descriptions of people, places, and their environment are so are so clear that they are tangible. Basically, we follow Trace's story for most of the book, catching glimpses of her past and her inner demons. Eventually, she meets and falls in love with one of her professors, and they get married. It is this point which starts the healing process for Trace, although we don't discover her true secret until nearly the end of the book -- even though we've been seeing parts of it. The ending is still a bit of a surprise, and this is the kind of story that you will continue to think about even when you're done reading it. This book is a keeper.

Iodine (an element which does not naturally occur in the free state)

Trace (a faint copy, a minute amount) Pennington is also Ianthe (violet, handmaiden of Persephone, the pure soul visited by Queen Mab) Covington, and both are brilliant and mad, in the classical literary Bertha Rochester madwoman-in-the-attic sense. Trace is fleeing a horrific childhood, and as Ianthe, she falls in love with her professor, Jacob (who labored fourteen years to win the woman he loved) Matthias. But her carefully constructed world is slowly unraveling, and we the readers must try to follow Trace/Ianthe through the labyrinth of her own mind as past and present interweave themselves, until one pulled thread threatens to topple the entire structure. (Could I have mixed one more metaphor in there?) Other reviewers have gotten caught up in trying to separate what is "real" and what is Trace's psychosis, to figure out what "really" happened to her. I think this is missing the point; in a sense, everything in the book - every fantasy, every hallucination, every dream, every strange visitor in the night - "happened." Sure, some of them only happened in the far reaches of Trace's troubled mind, in the locked closet of Bluebeard's to which only she holds the key, while some of them took place in the outside, observable world. So what? You could try to parse out past from present, physical from psychical, all day long - and you probably won't be able to stop yourself from trying - but insofar as this is Trace's story, her perceptions and her experiences are what matters. Now, that's not to say that you can just accept everything at face value here. Obviously, Trace is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and it is, on some level, important to try to peel back the layers of metaphor with which she has constructed her own reality. Thus, when she abandons her dog to go live with Jacob, she's not really "abandoning" her "dog." And when her childhood friend claims to have been abducted and impregnated by aliens, it's not really her "friend" who was taken by "aliens." Part of the joy of this book is piecing together the connections Trace makes in her own mind, the way she incorporates psychoanalytic theory, Jungian symbols, literary allusions, and a hundred other tiny references into a long and complicated narrative which she calls her own life. Did I mention that Trace/Ianthe is brilliant? Another of the thrills of "Iodine" is the way, as Ianthe, she quietly skewers the pretentious, self-absorbed culture of academia. Some passages were so wickedly funny they made me snort my free-trade organic soy milk double-caff latte all over my copy of "The Chalice and the Blade." Her descriptions of a stuffy psych prof and a women's studies guru are spot-on. Ianthe may be crazy, but she ain't stupid, as the saying goes. And the irony of a young women suffering from mental illness who is obsessed with the works of Jung and Hillman - even to the point of incorporating their theories into her delusions - is delicious. Normally I can't stand books that are esse

Uninhibited Literary Extravagance

It is as though Kimmel allows herself full permission for uninhibited literary extravagance in this lush novel about a tortured young woman who lives homeless in Indiana. Brilliant college student Trace chooses to live in an abandoned farmhouse with her dog Weeds rather than accept the free student room and board she's been offered through scholarship. This engrossing book sweeps the reader up into Trace's complicated relationships with her father and the much older professor she becomes involved with. What is real and what is not? Is Trace a beacon of clarity or a manipulative liar? Is she crazy, or does her convoluted thinking make sense considering her viewpoint as formed by her experiences? Along the way the reader is faced with deciphering what is real and what is residual confusion and madness from Trace's past. This is one of those books which demands an immediate second read. A movie analogy is M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense. Second and subsequent viewings prove that there is no wasted line or scene in the film ~ every word is necessary, and it is highly crafted. Iodine is crafted to the same level. Every word is necessary and every scene contributes to the gestalt, even though it may not be evident in the first reading. I continually found myself in awe of Kimmel's writing skills, thoroughness of research, and imagination. It's hard to believe this came from the same person who wrote Zippy. Kimmel is a true literary artist, and her fans will not be disappointed in Iodine.