Biography
Ann Quin (1936-1973) was a working-class writer from Brighton, England. She was at the forefront of British experimentalism in the 1960s along with BS Johnson and Alan Burns, and also lived in the US in the mid-sixties, working closely with US writers and poets including Robert Creeley. Prior to her death in 1973, she published four novels: Berg (1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969) and Tripticks (1972). A collection of short stories and the fragment of her unfinished last novel, The Unmapped Country (edited by Jennifer Hodgson), was published by And Other Stories to great acclaim in 2018. Quin’s novel Berg was republished by And Other Stories in 2019, to be followed by Three in 2020 and her remaining novels in subsequent years.
More Info
- You can read writers including Deborah Levy, Joanna Walsh, Juliet Jacques and Danielle Dutton on Ann Quin in Music & Literature No. 7.
Reviews
Ian Patterson
London Review of Books
‘A fast-moving, jump-cutting, semi-absurd, road-trip quest narrative.’
Sam Sacks
Wall Street Journal
‘Quin’s spare prose line—Delphic, obscure and hauntingly suggestive—creates a comparably vertiginous kind of enchantment. To submit to this unique book’s spell is to experience, in language, a “fantastic dance of images, shapes, forms.”’
New York Times
‘Quin works over a small area with the finest of tools. Every page, every word gives evidence of her care and workmanship.’
Paris Review
‘Quin’s prose never falters; it’s stunning.’
Publishers Weekly
‘Quin was a writer ahead of her time.’
Irish Times
‘Vividly intense and almost palpably immediate.’
Booklist
‘Quin uses carefully crafted imagery to stimulate the reader's subconscious.’
Library Journal
‘Quin tosses out hefty dashes of mordant humour and caustic wit.’
Tom McCarthy
‘I suspect that Ann Quin will eventually be viewed, alongside B. S. Johnson and Alexander Trocchi, as one of the few mid-century British novelists who actually, in the long term, matter.’
Chloe Aridjis
‘Ann Quin is a master painter of interiors, of voices that mosaic as they catch the light at strange, stirring angles.’
Jonathan Coe
‘Quin's militant refusal to compromise flavours her writing: you either take her on her own terms, or not at all. Richer and stranger than the satisfactions of mainstream fiction.’
Deborah Levy
‘Quin understood she was on to something new.’
Lee Rourke
‘One of our greatest ever novelists. Ann Quin’s was a new British working-class voice that had not been heard before: it was artistic, modern, and – dare I say it – ultimately European.’
Juliet Jacques
‘One of Britain’s most adventurous post-war writers. Psychologically dark and sexually daring.’
Danielle Dutton
‘Rare enough is a book that begins by stating its intention—rarer still one that proceeds to do seemingly everything it can to avoid following the path its intention has laid.’
Claire-Louise Bennett
‘Passages stirred up a certain kind of curiosity that I hadn’t felt kindling in me for so long. It’s difficult to describe – it’s almost like the omnipotent curiosity one burns with as an adolescent – sexual, solipsistic, melancholic, fierce, hungry, languorous – and without limit.’
Joanna Walsh
'To read Passages is to look down through clear water. It's absolutely lucid and blindingly reflective. It moves and you don't know how deep it goes. Perhaps there's a body down there. Perhaps it's your own.'
Stewart Home
‘Quin’s strangest novel and an absolute delight. A seductive blend of Samuel Beckett, Pauline Réage and pure madness.’
Juliet Jacques
Music & Literature
'The amount of wit and beauty Three finds in its own uncertainty makes it one of the most compelling novels of its time.'
The Scotsman
‘Exquisitely written from the first page to the last.’
Brian Evenson
‘An intriguing and successful novel, and remarkably contemporary in its stylistic sophistication.’
Praise for Ann Quin
‘I suspect that Ann Quin will eventually be viewed, alongside BS Johnson and Alexander Trocchi, as one of the few mid-century British novelists who actually, in the long term, matter.’ Tom McCarthy
‘Quin's militant refusal to compromise flavours her writing: you either take her on her own terms, or not at all. Richer and stranger than the satisfactions of mainstream fiction.’ Jonathan Coe
‘Quin understood she was on to something new.’ Deborah Levy
‘One of our greatest ever novelists. Ann Quin’s was a new British working-class voice that had not been heard before: it was artistic, modern, and – dare I say it – ultimately European.’ Lee Rourke
‘Ann Quin is a master painter of interiors, of voices that mosaic as they catch the light at strange, stirring angles.’ Chloe Aridjis
‘One of Britain’s most adventurous post-war writers. Psychologically dark and sexually daring.’ Juliet Jacques
'Quin works over a small area with the finest of tools. Every page, every word gives evidence of her care and workmanship.' New York Times
‘Quin’s prose never falters; it’s stunning.’ The Paris Review
‘Despite ongoing rumours of a BS Johnson revival, I feel our attention could be more usefully directed towards Ann Quin.’ Stewart Home, in 69 Things to do with a Dead Princess
‘The most naturally and delicately gifted novelist of her generation.’ The Scotsman
‘Rare enough is a book that begins by stating its intention—rarer still one that proceeds to do seemingly everything it can to avoid following the path its intention has laid.’ Danielle Dutton
‘Quin was a writer ahead of her time.’ Publishers Weekly
‘Vividly intense and almost palpably immediate.’ Irish Times
‘Quin uses carefully crafted imagery to stimulate the reader's subconscious.’ Booklist
‘Quin tosses out hefty dashes of mordant humour and caustic wit.’ Library Journal
TANK Magazine
‘Progressing with the potency of a fever dream, this reissue invites readers to discover Quin’s remarkable voice.’
Danielle Dutton
Literary Hub
‘Rare enough is a book that begins by stating its intention—rarer still one that proceeds to do seemingly everything it can to avoid following the path its intention has laid.’
Shane Anderson
The Nation
'The prose that makes Quin’s novel so dazzling 55 years later. The language of her book lurches in unexpected directions, fishtailing wildly from the dark to the erotic to the violent to the insanely funny.’
Financial Times
‘Quin’s prose is as sharp as a deadly blade, flashing between light and dark with arresting effect.’
Edwin Turner
Biblioklept
‘Read the book. There’s nothing I can do in this review that approaches the feeling of reading Ann Quin’s Berg. I can make lame comparisons, saying that it reminds me of James Joyce’s Ulysses (in its evocations of loose consciousness), or David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (in its oedipal voyeuristic griminess), or Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (for its surreal humor and dense claustrophobia). Or I can repeat: Read the book. [...] Quin wrote three other novels before walking into the sea in 1973 and never coming back. Those novels are Three (1966), Passages (1969), and Tripticks (1972). I really hope that And Other Stories will reissue these in the near future. Until then: Read the book.’
Daniel Fraser
Dublin Review of Books
‘What makes Berg one of the best British novels published since the war, is [the] repetitive, unyielding territory of failed transformation ... not merely a mystical plane opened up by the work of literature: paradoxically (and with a heavy dose of sadness and black humour) it is the place where literature comes closest to life.'
Andrew Gallix
Irish Times
‘A triumph of post-war literature. A classic of social surrealism.’
Laura Waddell
The Skinny
‘Berg reminds a little of Veronique Olmi’s tragic Beside the Sea, or Ferrante’s lost dolls in the sand, but with a runaway, off-kilter style all of its own that reminds the reader how celebrated Quin ought to be.’
Calum Barnes
Morning Star
‘A gritty yet deliciously strange masterpiece of British fiction.’
Chloe Aridjis
‘Ann Quin is a master painter of interiors, of voices that mosaic as they catch the light at strange, stirring angles.’
Tom McCarthy
‘After her death in 1973 at only 37, Ann Quin’s star first dipped beneath the horizon, disappearing from view entirely, before rising slowly but persistently, to the point that it’s now attaining the septentrional heights it always merited. I suspect that she’ll eventually be viewed, alongside BS Johnson and Alexander Trocchi, as one of the few mid-century British novelists who actually, in the long term, matter.’
Lee Rourke
The Guardian
‘She is one of our greatest ever novelists. Ann Quin’s was a new British working-class voice that had not been heard before.’
New York Times
‘A marvelously warped book.’
Ian Patterson
London Review of Books
‘Funny and profound.’
Juliet Jacques
‘One of Britain’s most adventurous post-war writers. Psychologically dark and sexually daring, Quin’s relentlessly experimental prose reads like nobody else.’
Juliet Jacques
‘One of Britain’s most adventurous post-war writers. Psychologically dark and sexually daring, Quin’s relentlessly experimental prose reads like nobody else.’
Deborah Levy
‘Quin understood she was on to something new and she took herself seriously, in the right way; she had a serious sense of her literary purpose.’
New York Times Book Review
‘Quin works over a small area with the finest of tools… every page, every word gives evidence of her care and workmanship.’
Lee Rourke
The Guardian
‘She is one of our greatest ever novelists. Ann Quin’s was a new British working-class voice that had not been heard before: it was artistic, modern, and – dare I say it – ultimately European.'
Danielle Dutton
‘Rare enough is a book that begins by stating its intention—rarer still one that proceeds to do seemingly everything it can to avoid following the path its intention has laid.’
Chloe Aridjis
‘Ann Quin is a master painter of interiors, of voices that mosaic as they catch the light at strange, stirring angles.’
Tom McCarthy
‘After her death in 1973 at only 37, Ann Quin’s star first dipped beneath the horizon, disappearing from view entirely, before rising slowly but persistently, to the point that it’s now attaining the septentrional heights it always merited. I suspect that she’ll eventually be viewed, alongside BS Johnson and Alexander Trocchi, as one of the few mid-century British novelists who actually, in the long term, matter.’
Andrew Gallix
The Guardian
‘Spanning the author’s entire career, The Unmapped Country builds up a portrait of the artist as a restless spirit, forever adventuring into the unknown. The diversity on display is impressive . . . her work is as open-ended as those sentences she regularly produced that trail off into silence, casting a spell instead of spelling out; floating away on their reserve of potentiality.’
Ben Lawrence
The Telegraph
‘Exuberance and humanity blossom from Quin's prose, which is also very funny . . . Although you can detect Virginia Woolf’s legacy here, there is a contemporary truth about Quin’s work, a desire to dwell in her own experiences.’
Lucy Scholes
The Financial Times
‘Even when recounting despair, Quin’s prose is as sharp as a deadly blade, flashing between light and dark with arresting effect. Reintroducing this exciting, important writer to the world is the perfect start to And Other Stories’ year of publishing women.’
Jonathan Coe
The Spectator
‘[Quin's] militant refusal to compromise flavours her writing: you either take her on her own terms, or not at all. [Her writing is] richer and stranger than the satisfactions of mainstream fiction.’
Ian Maleney
Irish Times
The Unmapped Country is an ideal title [for the collection]: Quin set off in search of unknown pleasures, a sensual experience of words and life both intimate and distant. What slight and elusive treasures she discovered there, what precious fragments.’
Julia Jordan
Times Literary Supplement
‘Quin nails bleak locales . . . with descriptions of bathetic infidelities in seedy seaside towns, moments where the fantasy of an encounter or relationship and its squalid reality are at odds, and nothing is ever satisfactory.’
Los Angeles Review of Books
'Quin’s short fiction is rightly reclaimed and republished by And Other Stories, and Jennifer Hodgson has done us a service by gathering these stories together. The Unmapped Country is a tantalizing read.’
Lauren Kane
The Paris Review
‘When I took piano lessons as a child, I was taught how to play notes staccato, striking each one with a quick hit of the key; such is the prose of Ann Quin. She writes a third-person narrative that silkily slides, in the style of stream of consciousness, through the heads of her characters. I’m chagrinned that it took me this long to find her work.’