Three

by Ann Quin

Overview

-- Ruth and Leonard's young female boarder, S., disappears under circumstances that suggest suicide. As the couple pours over her diary, audio tapes, and movies, their obsession with the enigmatic young girl takes over their relationship. Three combines laconic dialogue with poetic impressionism in an incisive exploration of the hidden emotions and sexual undercurrents of the British middle class.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564782724
Publisher:	Dalkey Archive Press
Publication date:	04/28/2001
Series:	British Literature Series
Edition description:	1ST DALKEY
Pages:	143
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.01(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Ann Quin, one of the best kept secrets of British experimental writing, has garnered comparisons to such diverse writers as Samuel Beckett and Nathalie Sarraute. Before her death in 1973, she published four novels, including "Berg" and "Passages". In 1964 she became the first female recipient of the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship which allowed her to travel to the U.S., a trip that provided the basis for "Tripticks".

Editorial Reviews

"A continuously interesting, beautifully written, rather venturesome novel of a literary artist.... " -- Choice

Dalkey Archive Press

"Quin has this talent for throwing off ripples of association... her best quality, her subconscious quality." --Alan Burns

Dalkey Archive Press

"Three has been made rather then begotten, and it is forever flirting with an elegant and obscure symbolism." --Times Literary Supplement

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

Before Quin died in 1973, an apparent suicide at 37, she published four novels in her native Britain, but only two in the States, including this, her second book, which Brian Evenson claims in a new introduction is an innovative masterpiece, despite its nonlinear, collage style with its run-on, unpunctuated sentences. Kirkus had a less sympathetic view in 1966, when this "morosely inbred" novel first appeared. "Close, cryptic, neurasthenic" is how we characterized this experimental narrative about three characters who do very little. "Resourcefully intuitive" readers might enjoy the verbal meanderings here since Quin, we thought, "prefers the symbol to the direct statement." Kirkus considered her an "expert" at capturing the "reproachful, edgy, nasty" atmosphere, which is "just as unpleasant as it is intended to be." In other words, for aficionados of the transgressive.

Kirkus Reviews