The name Ann Quin is practically synonymous with ‘forgotten’. A brief Google search of the author returns a handful of articles ruing the way in which one of Britain’s most innovative post-War writers has drifted towards obscurity. Her work sometimes echoes the likes of Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes, and deserves to be approached with the same intrigue and reverence as any avant-garde British author from the twentieth century.
October 16th Clear day. Sun at last. S hasn’t returned.
October 16th Rain again. Still no sign of S. Informed police.
October 18th Boat found capsized. Coat identified. Also note in pocket- looks like suicide
October 19th Two hours questioning by police sergeant. River and coastline dragged.
October 20th R in bed all day. Translation completed.
October 21st Dinner with the Blakelys. A good hock. Orchids making progress especially Barbantum.
2016 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Quin’s second novel, Three. Three is set in the sea-side holiday home of Ruth and Leonard, a middle-aged couple in the aftermath of the apparent suicide of their lodger, known only as S. This is the world of bitter, petty arguments, kitchen table small-talk over a dreary radio and lecherous sexual advances in shared bath-tubs. Ann Quin incisively dissects middle-class British relationships, exposing a sense of restraint whilst continuously hinting at the dark undercurrent which lurks beneath the surface. Ruth and Leonard’s shared murky domesticity drifts on, moribund, towards its gruelling climax.
Quin’s narratives are always challenging. Three is disorientating and resists any linear storytelling, and its murkiness is amplified by Quin’s stylistic experimentation. Quin shifts wildly between angular, jaunted language to a free-flowing elliptical style, with much of the narrative existing through a series of diary entries and audiotapes left behind by S. S’s diary entries provide interjections of stylistic beauty, reading like sprawling poems. Quin has a masterful command of both poetry and prose – we get the impression S retains a clarity which is lost on the couple:
“Then came the change. In the change. The knowledge
of what had to be done. What there is to do. As the leaves changed colour
the air is sharper. Signs of frost watched for. Days become shorter.
Hours lengthen. Wind rises out of the sea
carries mist to the house. Buries itself in the stonework.
The possibility of what might have been sinks away
into what is left”
Ann Quin died in 1973, aged thirty-seven. She left behind four novels. Three is a heart-wrenching novel which encapsulates both her incisive dissection of British middle-class life and fundamentally, her flair for stylistic experimentation, qualities which uphold Quin as such a strong and interesting novelist. The novel is available most recently from Dalkey Archive Press.
Below is a loosely compiled list of songs I think can be aligned with the novel in some shape or form. Some deal with domesticity, some the seaside, and others (perhaps arbitrarily) just seem to fit.
Tracklisting:
1) Adler – Two White Cranes
2) It Breaks my Heart – Hefner
3) Thick Like Snow – Oh Peas
4) Three’s a Crowd – Dennis
5) Back to Nature – Fad Gadget
6) Hunted by a Freak – Mogwai
7) Homecoming Queen – Sparklehorse
8) Don’t Smoke in Bed – Nina Simone
9) After Laughter – Wendy Rene