Joanna Kavenna

Rosa Lane is bored and restless and prone to grandiose thought. She quits her job in search of the ever elusive ‘something more.’ In the meantime, and to little surprise considering her mindset, her relationship of ten years falls apart. Adding insult to injury is a betrayal and a lack of compassion by those around her. Rosa spends her days making lists that never seem to get completed and telling herself that she’s ok, really ok, with all the changes swirling around her. She takes a show more lover and ignores her ex’s impending nuptials. Really, Rosa Lane is going to be just fine.

Inglorious is about lies. The lies we tell ourselves, the ones we push so deep that we start to believe them ourselves. They help us get through the day, both the mundane and the glorious points, and the extremes that cause us to go insane if we think too hard about them.

I loved this book. It was written beautifully. The author is a certain talent to the literary realm. I’ll be looking for her next offering. I’ll give that Rosa’s voice is protracted, but that’s kind of the point. Imagine how it must feel to be Rosa. There are stories we read that seem to strike a chord with the particular time in which we read them. I used to call She's Come Undone one of my favorite books and then I reread it, years later, and wondered, “What?” Inglorious is a book that hit me just right at this point in my life. I suspect others will have qualms with the character driven plot, but I identified with the protagonist.

Recommended for those who have battled depression, had a nervous breakdown, been wounded by a lover or anyone seeking insight into the mind of a girl on the edge of losing it all.

Review first published on Many A Quaint & Curious Volume show less

“Some said ‘Toolay’, some said ‘Thoolay’, a very few said ‘Thool’. Poets rhymed Thule with newly, truly and unruly, but never, it seemed with drool.”

The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule was far better in theory than in execution. Former journalist Joanna Kavenna (yes the same one whose book, The Birth of Love, is on this year’s Orange Prize longlist) has a fascination with Thule, which was first described by Greek explorer Pytheas, who claimed to have reached show more it in 4th century BC. Thule is supposed to be a “land near a frozen ocean, draped in the mist. Thule was seen once, described in opaque prose, and never identified with any certainty again. It became a mystery land, standing by a cold sea. A land at the edge of the maps.”


And somehow, ‘Thule’ became a word used to stand in for anything. e.e.cummings writes of the ‘Ultima Thule of plumbing’. A Thule society was set up in Munich, members included Hitler and Rudolf Hess. A US airbase in Greenland still retains the name of Thule.


Kavenna gives up her cushy job in London and travels through Shetland, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greenland and Spitsbergen. What a journey, eh? But the book is a bit of a letdown. Perhaps not entirely her fault, for how many ways can one describe lands of ice, snow and fjords?

I wasn’t expecting to read about Nazis and the World War when I came across this book. But Kavenna is quite determined to explore more about the Thule Society, interviewing Krigsbarn (children born to Norwegian mother, Nazi father) who were thought to be mentally ill, or who were simply shunned and hidden away in children’s homes or mental institutions after the war. She travels to Greenland, desperate to step foot on the US airbase of Thule, and is finally given a few hours to wander around. But it doesn’t make for anything interesting or insightful really. In the end, I had more interest in her shipmates onboard the Aurora Borealis, travelling around Greenland in this former icebreaker, stopping at settlements along the way, like the six German scientists who shared her table:

“Soon they just wanted everyone else to vanish; they said they disliked queuing behind the for food, and passing them life-jackets and waiting while they fumbled for change at the bar. But they kept it up, toasting each other, greeting each other in the mornings like long-lost friends, treading on each other’s toes in the queues and then pretending it was all an accident.”

Or the two employees at the deserted, opulent Villa Ammende in Estonia, where Kavenna is the only guest. And as she leaves, she wonders if the guy who runs the reception and the waitress live it up during this low season:

“The bacchanalia only stopped when the bell tolled through the corridors; then they put on their uniforms and became solemn and monosyllabic. As I drove off I imagined the man on the desk whipping off his grey suit and donning a red velvet smoking jacket, slinking into the billiard room to pot a few balls, before his first whisky of the day.”

Something tells me that Kavenna’s works of fiction might be a better read.

So The Ice Museum summed up: An intriguing endeavour, but in the end, not really a journey that interested me very much, although it did inspire a little bit of wanderlust (I do have a soft spot for tales of arctic exploration). show less

In several reviews, this novel was referred to as "darkly comic" and I can't think of a better way to describe it. It is the story of a Rosa Lane's downward spiral into a nervous breakdown. A series of events starting with the death of her mother cause the pieces of Rosa's life to fall like dominos. Reading this book is like hearing the endless, manic, but sometimes humorous conversations that Rosa has in her own head. It is interesting that Rosa never fails to notice the minute details of show more the world around her, while at the same time she seems totally oblivious to her own world collapsing around her. The pace of the book added to the feeling of that downward spiral that Rosa is trapped in and it was like watching someone racing to destruction without being able to stop them. This was a very candid look at depression and may make many readers uncomfortable, but Kavenna dealt with it with compassion and humor. It was hard not to ache a bit for Rosa while reading this book. show less

Kavenna blames her obsession with Thule on Pytheas, stating he began the story when he claimed he had been to the mythical land of Thule by way of Marseilles. But what or where exactly is Thule? Is it a place of barren rocks, howling winds, and flinty skies? Is it a Nazi organization, a secret society borne out of prejudices and hate? Is it an ancient calling to barbaric Vikings and long-forgotten mythologies? Kavenna travels the globe looking for answers. She meets with the former president show more of Estonia, Lennart Meri, searching for the true Thule. She travels to a former Thule settlement in Greenland and talks with scientists about global warming and the threat to the region's polar bears.
Throughout Kavenna's journey her descriptions of the landscape and people are stunning. Her words crackle with the cold and demonstrate the warmth of the people. show less