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Passages
A poetic book of voices, landscapes and the passing of time, Ann Quin's finely wrought novel reflects the multiple meanings of the very word "passages." Two characters move through the book--a woman in search of her brother, and her lover (a masculine reflection of herself) in search of himself. The form of the novel, reflecting the schizophrenia of the characters, is split into two sections--a narrative, and a diary annotated with those thoughts that provoked the entries.
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
Ann Quin
9 books199 followersAnn Quin (1936-1973) was a British writer noted for her experimental style. The author of Berg (1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969) and Tripticks (1972), she committed suicide in 1973 at the age of 37.
Quin came from a working-class family and was educated at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament. She trained as a shorthand typist and worked in a solicitor's office, then at a publishing company when she moved to Soho and began writing novels.
Despite a complete re-print of her works by the Dalkey Archive Press, Quin's work has yet to see the critical attention many people claim it deserves.
Quin came from a working-class family and was educated at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament. She trained as a shorthand typist and worked in a solicitor's office, then at a publishing company when she moved to Soho and began writing novels.
Despite a complete re-print of her works by the Dalkey Archive Press, Quin's work has yet to see the critical attention many people claim it deserves.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
August 13, 2024
In Passages, an unnamed woman travels to an unnamed country, by all indications Greece under military rule in the 1960s, with her lover in search of her missing brother. While written in a spare, spontaneous and poetic prose, the novel bursts with psychological complexity, subconscious imagery, and literary textures and forms. The accounts of their journey alternate between the woman’s narrative and her lover’s diary. Each is layered with additional narrative dimensions, hers with the metamorphosing first- and third-person account and his with annotations on his diary’s margins, with allusions mostly to Greek mythology, some of which might have been written by her.
There is a constant repressive atmosphere of violence and demonic hauntings throughout. It’s felt in the often sadomasochistic intimacy between the two lovers, the street and prison scenes in the country terrorized by the military regime (in “the climate of tragedy” and in “a city where every street declares its defeat”), as well as in the mythological stories annotated on the margins of her lover’s diary. While outwardly presented as a search to find her (likely already dead) brother, the narrative is primarily turned toward the interior thoughts, sensations, memories, and feelings with an unmistakable sense of a mirroring search for both her and her lover’s inward self. Searching for themselves… or could it be just her own interior journey in search of her own self? As possibly alluded to in this fragment from the diary:
Sean’s praise for this novel led me to select it for my first encounter with Ann Quin for which I am deeply grateful. His amazing review can be read here.
There is a constant repressive atmosphere of violence and demonic hauntings throughout. It’s felt in the often sadomasochistic intimacy between the two lovers, the street and prison scenes in the country terrorized by the military regime (in “the climate of tragedy” and in “a city where every street declares its defeat”), as well as in the mythological stories annotated on the margins of her lover’s diary. While outwardly presented as a search to find her (likely already dead) brother, the narrative is primarily turned toward the interior thoughts, sensations, memories, and feelings with an unmistakable sense of a mirroring search for both her and her lover’s inward self. Searching for themselves… or could it be just her own interior journey in search of her own self? As possibly alluded to in this fragment from the diary:
What can I do—continue being a metaphor for her despair?As if She and He are the duality of her divided self, her inner demons transfigured into feminine and masculine parts, one narrating the experience of her passages, the other recording it in the diary. Perhaps… or perhaps not. Either way, it’s brilliant.
She sketches out her dreams on his skin.
Sean’s praise for this novel led me to select it for my first encounter with Ann Quin for which I am deeply grateful. His amazing review can be read here.
May 26, 2020
A woman and a man travel in an unnamed region that might be the Mediterranean. The woman is searching for her missing brother, a Communist party member who has possibly been 'disappeared'. All she has is blurred and incomplete photos suggesting a faint likeness. The man she travels with is her lover who is depressed and seeking meaning in his life. The story is told in alternating sections: the woman's first-person narrative (both I and We); and the man's journal complete with marginal notes primarily regarding applicable cultural and mythological allusions. Both sections also dip in and out of third-person perspective, perhaps as a way for the characters to distance themselves from what is happening in real time: namely, the incremental disintegration of their relationship.
The novel begins with the woman's narrative before switching to the man's journal, where previously described events are mirrored and reflected back to the reader for contrast. Her narrative often portrays him as somewhat secretive and superficial, as if acting a role, but access to his thoughts and reactions to her via his journal allow us to see him as more vulnerable and less self-assured. As the two of them struggle in their own ways to maintain their individuality while still participating in their shared life, the outside forces of political turmoil and their sense of being strangers in a strange land (while possibly being followed by agents) work against them. The woman is driven on by her search for her brother, who she now believes is or was held on a shadowy island housing an internment camp for dissidents where horrible acts of torture have occurred. The man torn between helping her find her brother and fulfilling his deepest longing to be somewhere else, studies his dreams, cutting them up and merging them together in a search for answers.
Mythology mingles with reality, eroticism blends with violence, confinement contrasts with escape, and madness clings like lichen to both characters as they operate within segments of time that expand and contract with no sign of warning. At one point the man wonders, 'What if one loses all one's demons—surely new ones will leap in?' The book revolves around these demons and the infinite race to stay just ahead of them. But it also points to times when one must turn and grapple with them, for better or for worse.
The novel begins with the woman's narrative before switching to the man's journal, where previously described events are mirrored and reflected back to the reader for contrast. Her narrative often portrays him as somewhat secretive and superficial, as if acting a role, but access to his thoughts and reactions to her via his journal allow us to see him as more vulnerable and less self-assured. As the two of them struggle in their own ways to maintain their individuality while still participating in their shared life, the outside forces of political turmoil and their sense of being strangers in a strange land (while possibly being followed by agents) work against them. The woman is driven on by her search for her brother, who she now believes is or was held on a shadowy island housing an internment camp for dissidents where horrible acts of torture have occurred. The man torn between helping her find her brother and fulfilling his deepest longing to be somewhere else, studies his dreams, cutting them up and merging them together in a search for answers.
Mythology mingles with reality, eroticism blends with violence, confinement contrasts with escape, and madness clings like lichen to both characters as they operate within segments of time that expand and contract with no sign of warning. At one point the man wonders, 'What if one loses all one's demons—surely new ones will leap in?' The book revolves around these demons and the infinite race to stay just ahead of them. But it also points to times when one must turn and grapple with them, for better or for worse.
May 20, 2022
Ann Quin's 1969 third novel ventured a little further into experimental territory than the second (Three), but the connections between the two are clear. This one follows a couple abroad, in an authoritarian country that seems to be at least partly based on Greece.
As in Three, the narration switches between the two main characters and neither part of the story is entirely straightforward. The woman is searching for her disappeared brother, and has a series of sexual adventures. We learn rather less about the man, but his diary is a little straighter than her episodic and impressionistic account which it interrupts. An intriguing and poetic book, but not an easy one to encapsulate in a short review.
As in Three, the narration switches between the two main characters and neither part of the story is entirely straightforward. The woman is searching for her disappeared brother, and has a series of sexual adventures. We learn rather less about the man, but his diary is a little straighter than her episodic and impressionistic account which it interrupts. An intriguing and poetic book, but not an easy one to encapsulate in a short review.
February 1, 2013
Not that I've dismissed the possibility that my brother is dead. We have discussed what is possible, what is not. They say there's every chance. No chance at all.
I had the feeling of staying up late at night and listening to someone far away fighting. Voices muffled, then sex. Not lovemaking. I can't see or here anything and then images come from the sounds. Not too loud, someone will hear. An unreal quality, like playacting or a dream. Whips, moans, hair and lashing. The next day they emerge with red eyes unused to the sun. I will look away and hear sounds of insects. Eating, flying, going about their business. Too large and I'm too small, cornered. Pollinating something, a dream feeling. The unreal too large quality when you stare at something to avoid seeing something else. I wasn't sure what was going on. It could have been a sitcom with a "it was all a dream" ending. She is looking for her brother. She doesn't know that he is dead. He goes with her. Sometimes she is talking. When she is talking it feels like what people say is prose poetry even though there is no such thing. You could take any of her words and separate them to live on their own. On their own they would be poetry. Maybe about something that someone saw and repeated under glass. It's blown up. Together the words flow over and I get nothing. When he talks it is like he is talking twice. If he were written he'd be a book with margins written on sides. I'm not sure how many sides he has. There are references to snakes and mythological beings. History, although he doesn't own his own. He drifts between lovers. Sometimes he's a married man carrying on an affair. He doesn't want them, he drifts, they follow. I had the feeling this is to have something underlining that he is following her to look for her brother. She has all of the mystery to him. Anyone could be her brother. Everyone she meets is her brother. I had absolutely no idea who her brother was, or why she wanted to find him. I never got over the feeling of listening to someone that I couldn't see. I do like how Quinn describes things.
I could dress them in clothes, this man and this woman. All leather, skinned from still alive animals. They scream behind barn doors. They would be an image before a door closed. Like in a film about mental patients to show that it is a place you don't want to be inside. A woman is screaming far off. Something terrible would be happening to her. Another woman would scream to suggest that there was as much to fear from her as from any of the men in authoritarian white coats. "Fucking! Fucking bitch!" She would scream. I felt like that all of the time when reading Passages. The door would always close. Something else would be in its place. Wake up, another dream, another door or is it a window. I don't know if they find the brother or what they would do if they do find him. Move on, nothing to see here. Nothing to do, nothing to live.
On page 42 of the Dalkey Archive edition there's a part captioned "Notebook of a Depressive" with a list of symptoms.
I felt that way about them. Maybe the door didn't close and I'm just looking over a chart on the clipboard held by the guy with the coat on. Maybe they all felt like they were listening in on someone else. It's not a good feeling to do that too long. To space out until everything looks too big. I used to do that a lot and would regret it afterwards because my eyes would hurt. What would it feel like if you weren't doing it on purpose and you couldn't stop? With Quin it felt on purpose and only interested like in really big bugs. To feel that way and not be able to help it was probably more the point. You would walk around in your own hall of mirrors and then is the joke on you? I could almost feel his helplessness, his awful rape fantasies and hitching his dying star to her burned out flame. Close another door.
I had the feeling of staying up late at night and listening to someone far away fighting. Voices muffled, then sex. Not lovemaking. I can't see or here anything and then images come from the sounds. Not too loud, someone will hear. An unreal quality, like playacting or a dream. Whips, moans, hair and lashing. The next day they emerge with red eyes unused to the sun. I will look away and hear sounds of insects. Eating, flying, going about their business. Too large and I'm too small, cornered. Pollinating something, a dream feeling. The unreal too large quality when you stare at something to avoid seeing something else. I wasn't sure what was going on. It could have been a sitcom with a "it was all a dream" ending. She is looking for her brother. She doesn't know that he is dead. He goes with her. Sometimes she is talking. When she is talking it feels like what people say is prose poetry even though there is no such thing. You could take any of her words and separate them to live on their own. On their own they would be poetry. Maybe about something that someone saw and repeated under glass. It's blown up. Together the words flow over and I get nothing. When he talks it is like he is talking twice. If he were written he'd be a book with margins written on sides. I'm not sure how many sides he has. There are references to snakes and mythological beings. History, although he doesn't own his own. He drifts between lovers. Sometimes he's a married man carrying on an affair. He doesn't want them, he drifts, they follow. I had the feeling this is to have something underlining that he is following her to look for her brother. She has all of the mystery to him. Anyone could be her brother. Everyone she meets is her brother. I had absolutely no idea who her brother was, or why she wanted to find him. I never got over the feeling of listening to someone that I couldn't see. I do like how Quinn describes things.
He acknowledged her in the hotel by smiling a half smile. He did not seem to belong, belong in his clothes. Were they too large, too small? Something was wrong somewhere. Perhaps the tie with that shirt. She sat in the lounge. He sat at the bar. She saw him in the mirror. She looked at a magazine. Cigarettes lit one from another. His fingers round the stem of glass again. I felt sure something would happen. I ordered a drink. He lit my cigarette. Don't you think this place is after all charming? He said, fingers across the lighter, again and again. She found herself breathless, could not, would not answer. But she smiled, less than half a smile. He was after all a stranger, a foreigner. Someone she would prefer not to know. Besides...
I could dress them in clothes, this man and this woman. All leather, skinned from still alive animals. They scream behind barn doors. They would be an image before a door closed. Like in a film about mental patients to show that it is a place you don't want to be inside. A woman is screaming far off. Something terrible would be happening to her. Another woman would scream to suggest that there was as much to fear from her as from any of the men in authoritarian white coats. "Fucking! Fucking bitch!" She would scream. I felt like that all of the time when reading Passages. The door would always close. Something else would be in its place. Wake up, another dream, another door or is it a window. I don't know if they find the brother or what they would do if they do find him. Move on, nothing to see here. Nothing to do, nothing to live.
On page 42 of the Dalkey Archive edition there's a part captioned "Notebook of a Depressive" with a list of symptoms.
I felt that way about them. Maybe the door didn't close and I'm just looking over a chart on the clipboard held by the guy with the coat on. Maybe they all felt like they were listening in on someone else. It's not a good feeling to do that too long. To space out until everything looks too big. I used to do that a lot and would regret it afterwards because my eyes would hurt. What would it feel like if you weren't doing it on purpose and you couldn't stop? With Quin it felt on purpose and only interested like in really big bugs. To feel that way and not be able to help it was probably more the point. You would walk around in your own hall of mirrors and then is the joke on you? I could almost feel his helplessness, his awful rape fantasies and hitching his dying star to her burned out flame. Close another door.
November 28, 2015
A Mediterranean travelelogue of disaffection and dissolution, Passages follows a women searching for her brother, dead or alive, across unnamed and war-torn countries, while her sometime lover alternately aids her search and follows his own into erotic excess. This is a very oblique story, conveyed in fragments and journal-bound notes, where themes and details flutter by and lost into a desolate landscape more than they compose a linear narrative. It may be Ann Quin's best writing, though, suprising me with its poetic clarity after the messiness of her first novel, and heavily-collaged last (there, though, the messiness seems entirely deliberate and thematically apt, however, as the unstoppable rush of modern media constantly interrupts and disrupts the prose). In any event, this catches Quin at her at her most exacting, perhaps recomposing the muddled search of her sometime collaborator Alan Burns' sludgily disconcerting Europe After the Rain, in a series of hallucinatory postcards. Like that one, this is a book that must simply be surrendered to and carried away by.
September 20, 2019
I like the fragmentary style and intertextuality. But I did not like the content of the male's part with its reference to underage sex (and rape). Brutal , far from aesthetic, not justified by art. Overall i can see the experimentation and the skill, but it left me cold.
October 30, 2023
Way more experimentally disorienting in nature than Quin's Berg, and where the Beckett-esque absurd humour is replaced with a seriously dark and uncomfortable erotica, Passages really did get under my skin. If there is any sort of plot, and there kind of is - a woman and her lover go in search of her brother in some unnamed hot and oppressive run-down country hit by political turmoil - it is only hinted and obliquely glimpsed at in parts of the narrative, which is made up of interior monologues, terse fragments and personal journal entries with side annotations, all jumping between first and third person; from I to we to she to he, and in a manner than can be manic, dreamlike, depressive, and sexually distressing. Quin isn't interested in telling a story, and instead focuses on the perceptions of her alternating narrators, and whilst I did find the whole set-up hard to crack initially, that started to ease the more I read. It's noted in the introduction that you simply have to read this in one go, and now I can see why it has to be this way. Echoes of Robbe-Grillet certainly, but I also felt the presence of W.S. Burroughs, and even Sarah Kane. Not as enjoyable as Berg, but still a dazzling piece of unconventional fiction.
November 5, 2024
Van het meest ijzingwekkende proza dat ik ooit las.
🥶😱😵💫
🥶😱😵💫
April 13, 2020
Eerie and so internal/focused on its two bored, miserable, extremely horny characters' psychology it borders on non-narrative. I thought this was Ann Quin's second novel but it turns out it's her third, which explains why it feels like such a huge stylistic leap from her first one, Berg. Berg was dense, confusing, claustrophobic, and actually pretty funny for such an experimental book; this is so much clearer and spacious, like Ann is finally giving us room to breathe after the maximalism of her first book. Chapters alternate between an unnamed woman's perspective as she wanders a purgatory-like island in Greece looking for her missing brother (who may or may not be dead) and the perspective of her male lover, a married man struggling to find any purpose in life but not struggling to find women and men willing to have kinky sex with him. Her chapters are as close to conventional as Ann Quin probably ever got (which is, still, not very), made up of observational fragments as she meets a variety of shady Greek men on her quest, while the man's paragraphs are structured like diary entries taking place parallel to the events of the previous chapter, complete with margin notes about art he sees around the island. It's all very Not For Everyone and even though there's technically not a whole lot of text—112 pages, and the pages have plenty of empty space—it feels like a slow read, but I really liked it. Depressing experimental fiction is my kink!
I got Ann Quin's other two books in the mail a week ago and I'm super excited to read 'em but, out of concern for my mental health, am going to read a normal book in between so I don't go crazy.
I got Ann Quin's other two books in the mail a week ago and I'm super excited to read 'em but, out of concern for my mental health, am going to read a normal book in between so I don't go crazy.
April 15, 2024
The endless shining of the sun. Meanwhile the cocks crow day and night. Their persistent crowing. And my own. = 🤨🥺😢😭
December 24, 2017
I can appreciate experimental literature. Must it always be an experiment in making deviant sexuality utterly tedious?
The writing is pretty, in an impressionistic sort of way, but it didn't really go anywhere. To me, this felt more like the notes for a book than a finished work.
The writing is pretty, in an impressionistic sort of way, but it didn't really go anywhere. To me, this felt more like the notes for a book than a finished work.
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March 20, 2025İnsan ya tüm iblislerini kaybederse- herhalde yenileri ortaya çıkacaktır?s 120
Kayıpların gölgesi hep bizi takip eder ve bizde derin izler bırakır. Kardeşinin işkencede öldüğünü düşünen bir kadının kardeşini bulma çabası Pasajlar metni. Ama anlatım net değil. Gri, flu ve kasvetli. Anna Kavan'ı anımsatan bir anlatım tekniği mevcut Ann'in Quin'in. Anna Kavan'dan daha zor bir yazar Quin. Kadınının sevgilisinin notlari, güncesi eşlik ediyor bu arayışa. Şiirsel metinler, ucu açık cümleler ve mitlerin anlatımı bu güncede rastladığımız bir anlatım şekli.
Duygu yoğunluğu mitolojik öğelerle örülmüş bu bakımdan bana Yourcenar'in Ateşler kitabını anımsattı. Bence edebi anlamda doyurucu bir metin. Her okuyucunun sevebileceğini sanmiyorum Pasajlar kitabını. Gri, deneysel metin seviyorum derseniz, bu yazarı seversiniz. Nedense metni okurken beynimde Berlioz'un Fantastik Senfonisi çaldı durdu. Mitsel anlatım etkili olmuş olabilir. İyi okumalar dilerim.
Kayıpların gölgesi hep bizi takip eder ve bizde derin izler bırakır. Kardeşinin işkencede öldüğünü düşünen bir kadının kardeşini bulma çabası Pasajlar metni. Ama anlatım net değil. Gri, flu ve kasvetli. Anna Kavan'ı anımsatan bir anlatım tekniği mevcut Ann'in Quin'in. Anna Kavan'dan daha zor bir yazar Quin. Kadınının sevgilisinin notlari, güncesi eşlik ediyor bu arayışa. Şiirsel metinler, ucu açık cümleler ve mitlerin anlatımı bu güncede rastladığımız bir anlatım şekli.
Duygu yoğunluğu mitolojik öğelerle örülmüş bu bakımdan bana Yourcenar'in Ateşler kitabını anımsattı. Bence edebi anlamda doyurucu bir metin. Her okuyucunun sevebileceğini sanmiyorum Pasajlar kitabını. Gri, deneysel metin seviyorum derseniz, bu yazarı seversiniz. Nedense metni okurken beynimde Berlioz'un Fantastik Senfonisi çaldı durdu. Mitsel anlatım etkili olmuş olabilir. İyi okumalar dilerim.
February 10, 2025
3.5 rounded up
So weird and messed up but so good
So weird and messed up but so good
April 10, 2025
deneysel bir metin fakat bana çok hitap etmedi. zorlayarak 1,5'tan 2 yıldız veriyorum.
mitolojinin yer alması yer yer hoşuma gitti, tabi ki.
mitolojinin yer alması yer yer hoşuma gitti, tabi ki.
March 10, 2016
He Are you happy or unhappy?
She That’s not a very important question
This is a story of depression and annihilation and co-dependence and/but it’s very beautiful.
A man and a woman wander through Mediterranean beach towns, possibly all on the brink of war, searching for the woman’s lost brother, who may or may not be dead, and for themselves, neither of which they can seem to find.
Passages is split into quarters. The first and third are the woman’s point of view, which comes as segments of description prose-poetry and staccato sentences, not unlike A Girl if a Half Formed Thing though far more comprehensible and prettier. She alternates between the first person and the third person describing herself, a trick to modulate her distance from events. The man’s portions are his journals, relating the same events as his lover’s, sprinkled with dreams and self reflection. Mad ramblings on Greek mythology and Talmudic script are scribbled in the margins.
The two spend less time actually looking for the missing brother than they do running from a Kafkaesque squad of secret police they’re convinced are following them. And they spend more time than both of those things having rough sex with strangers, or thinking about doing so. Bondage, sadomasochism, whips, and chains. They both fantasize about rape, and there’s segments where it seems like maybe the man is a rapist or maybe the woman is being raped, but it’s hard to really say if any of that is actually happening; more like being at the mercy of sexual primacy and pushed along by a combination of inertia and the force of others allows someone to avoid the fact of their own agency.
In describing this, I fear I make it sound like this a narrative tale of people doing these things; it’s not. It’s fragments, passages. From one paragraph to the next, there may be little or no thread or correlation at all. It’s mosaic.
I read it on the beach and found it excellent.
This was originally published at The Scrying Orb.
October 7, 2017
Ann Quin’s Passages (1969) is a brilliant blur of a novel. When you are done with its 112 pages, you will know you have been on breathtaking roller coaster of a journey, but you won’t know where you’ve been or remember much of what you witnessed on the way. A man and a woman (both nameless) are traveling through some vaguely Mediterranean country. Part of the time the couple appear to be searching for the woman’s missing brother, who might already be dead. There are fleeting rumors of torture, a firing squad, detention camps, a sinister right-wing government, suggesting that they are most likely in Greece, which came under the rule of a military junta in 1967. The two suspect they are being followed.
In Passages, Quin’s narration alternates between two very different formats. One is a somewhat straightforward third person indirect prose narration, except the perspective can shift between his and hers—sometimes in successive sentences. The writing in these sections disconcertingly omits the usual signposts that tell us who, where, when, why. Only the what counts. There is almost no reporting from inside his or her mind in these sections, only what they (or one of them, at least) see, do, hear, say.
This kind of narration alternates with sections of the man’s daily journal, which cover the same time period as the prose portion it follows. But even the journal is bifurcated, containing both the daily entries and occasional annotations written in the margin. He observes her, thinks about her obsessions and what he calls her “madness,” and he ponders his own obsessions and his nightly dreams. His journal is very much concerned with the questions of why? and what does this mean? Many of the marginal notes are descriptions of the imagery on the sides of kraters and other ancient Greek vessels. At times, it’s tempting to think that Quin is using the man’s journal to observe someone very much like herself. It’s the way in which Quin deliberately distances the female character and then analyzes her.
There's a more substantial review at my my blog
In Passages, Quin’s narration alternates between two very different formats. One is a somewhat straightforward third person indirect prose narration, except the perspective can shift between his and hers—sometimes in successive sentences. The writing in these sections disconcertingly omits the usual signposts that tell us who, where, when, why. Only the what counts. There is almost no reporting from inside his or her mind in these sections, only what they (or one of them, at least) see, do, hear, say.
This kind of narration alternates with sections of the man’s daily journal, which cover the same time period as the prose portion it follows. But even the journal is bifurcated, containing both the daily entries and occasional annotations written in the margin. He observes her, thinks about her obsessions and what he calls her “madness,” and he ponders his own obsessions and his nightly dreams. His journal is very much concerned with the questions of why? and what does this mean? Many of the marginal notes are descriptions of the imagery on the sides of kraters and other ancient Greek vessels. At times, it’s tempting to think that Quin is using the man’s journal to observe someone very much like herself. It’s the way in which Quin deliberately distances the female character and then analyzes her.
There's a more substantial review at my my blog
December 21, 2012
I went to the library to get another one of Ann Quin’s books, but picked up this one instead. This book reminded me a lot of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s written in fragments and the writing is poetic. The landscape is not the post-apocalyptic America, but an unnamed Island in which a woman is searching for her brother whom she fears killed by the military. She’s accompanied by her lover. As in The Road, there’s no plot. The focus is on the relationship between the man and the woman. Half of the book is narrated by the woman who observes her lover and observes herself observing him. The other half is the diary entries of the man who, inspired by Greek mythology and the Talmud, talks about his mad fantasies and dreams and hallucinations; and tries to make sense of himself and his lover. “The problem is to discover whether I can live with this woman’s demons without forfeiting my own.”
November 20, 2023
I will definitely be coming back to this. I’m still not entirely sure what I just read, but it reminds me vaguely of Bolaño’s Antwerp.
EDIT: Upon coming back to this book I have decided it is one of my favorite works of literature. This is a puzzle that resists being solves and I love that about it.
EDIT: Upon coming back to this book I have decided it is one of my favorite works of literature. This is a puzzle that resists being solves and I love that about it.
February 28, 2023
Still beautiful writing by Quin but didn’t feel as connected to this as her others. Review to come…
May 16, 2024
hmm. where to begin with this. this was my third Quin book and it’s definitely the most challenging i’ve read up to now. with its somewhat parallels to her previous novel ‘Three’ (my favourite so far) i was super excited to read this but honestly my enjoyment of this book really suffered simply due to how honestly depressing it felt to read.
just to be clear, i feel that is the definite emotion that Quin was going for so i’m not stating it as 100% bad thing. this book is just extremely uncomfy at times!! to its credit, it is written so incredibly well. maybe some of my favourite passages (ha) out of all of Quin’s works. this book does not shy away from purposely diluting its ‘main plot’, (the looking of a missing brother) and instead ventures into the murky & unpleasant feelings of desire. i did enjoy the separate perspectives with their drastically different writing styles. the diary exerts were easily the most eerie sections to get through. borderline schizophrenic to read. the dark & violent sadomasochism had me split. the overall look into desire & sex was certainly interesting, but as mentioned some felt hard to stomach.
my overall summary of this book is generally positive. i think this is an absolute amazing work, so incredibly intricate and dense. i am sure there is countless things i missed just due to how fast Quin’s ideas bounce all over the pages. there is definitely a lot of merit to this work, i just wasn’t left with the sensations of awe ‘Three’ & ‘Berg’ left me with.
just to be clear, i feel that is the definite emotion that Quin was going for so i’m not stating it as 100% bad thing. this book is just extremely uncomfy at times!! to its credit, it is written so incredibly well. maybe some of my favourite passages (ha) out of all of Quin’s works. this book does not shy away from purposely diluting its ‘main plot’, (the looking of a missing brother) and instead ventures into the murky & unpleasant feelings of desire. i did enjoy the separate perspectives with their drastically different writing styles. the diary exerts were easily the most eerie sections to get through. borderline schizophrenic to read. the dark & violent sadomasochism had me split. the overall look into desire & sex was certainly interesting, but as mentioned some felt hard to stomach.
my overall summary of this book is generally positive. i think this is an absolute amazing work, so incredibly intricate and dense. i am sure there is countless things i missed just due to how fast Quin’s ideas bounce all over the pages. there is definitely a lot of merit to this work, i just wasn’t left with the sensations of awe ‘Three’ & ‘Berg’ left me with.
April 16, 2025
Conclusion: love and lust can be so distracting
May 27, 2025
"What if one loses all one's demons - surely new ones will leap in?"
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August 1, 2019I suppose the best word to describe this novel is cinematic....It reminds me of a combination of BLOW-UP and Z, with John Cassavetes handling the boy-girl domestic scenes. It's been compared to Graham Greene's BRIGHTON ROCK but reminds me more of Cyril Connolly's THE ROCK POOL, the same sense of slightly decadent beach-side futility. (Her first two novels have a similar setting.) Her later and last novel TRIPTICKS is more amusing, a bizarre trip through the late-60s US from a British perspective. The various varieties of psychosis on display in America seem to have inspired Quin. (And she included paraphrases of quotations from Vice Presidents Thomas Marshall and Spiro Agnew as well as one from LBJ.) There are some tricky errors--Americans do not use "pissed" as a synonym for drunk--but as a deranged attack on a deranged country, TRIPTICKS is as good as Kingsley Amis's ONE FAT ENGLISHMAN. (Admittedly, Amis said his intention was to make fun of the visiting Brit rather than Americans, but I'm not sure I believe him.) Quin wrote 2 other novels, BERG (her most straightforward, readable work) and THREE (much like PASSAGES with its multilayered, enigmatic approach) before drowning at age 37.
March 20, 2023
In style, I really enjoyed this book, but in subject matter and plot, it fell apart for me. The writing itself had a really lovely rhythmic flow to it and the descriptive passages were vivid and visceral. The way Quin strung paragraphs together that tended to jump from subject to subject but still have a really clear interconnectedness and through line, reading it made you feel as if you were actually experiencing these moments as your own memories. I was impressed with her ability to portray life as it feels to live it; in that way, I felt her experimental writing style succeeded.
When it came to the plot, and honestly the characters, that’s where it kind of lost me. It felt as if violence, rape, pedophilia, all sorts of difficult subject matters were being tossed around for shock value, to push boundaries, and to make the reader uncomfortable, without any real reason or message. I didn’t connect with the story, but it also never felt as if that was the priority. I enjoyed the female character’s perspective far more than the male’s; although she even felt kind of vacant. All and all, I was a little disturbed and for what?
When it came to the plot, and honestly the characters, that’s where it kind of lost me. It felt as if violence, rape, pedophilia, all sorts of difficult subject matters were being tossed around for shock value, to push boundaries, and to make the reader uncomfortable, without any real reason or message. I didn’t connect with the story, but it also never felt as if that was the priority. I enjoyed the female character’s perspective far more than the male’s; although she even felt kind of vacant. All and all, I was a little disturbed and for what?
May 8, 2016
A short yet poignant and ultimately unsettling collection of, well, passages. The anonymous British couple is overseas, perhaps on a Greek island, or maybe North Africa, overindulging in parties, their tortured, open love affair, ennui, bsdm, and self-despair. A war creeps closer. The threat of militia and arrest is in the air. The woman ostensibly searches for her brother, who is likely jailed or dead. Beautiful and impressionistic sentences set up the short scenes, most of which are striking. Dreams merge as scenes become more disturbing: the rape of a cripple, pedophilia, hopelessness. Haunting effects are reinforced by knowledge of the writer's suicide, who I presume was much like the beautiful, sad woman described in the book, overseas with her lover, perhaps on a Greek island, or maybe North Africa.
January 20, 2013
This is absolutely amazing and thrilling read. Whether you read it as a whole or opening it from time to time to read its fragments, it offers emotionally rich and balanced read. Some passages are almost ripe and ready for you to squeeze the sweet juices out of them. Some may feel bitter and can remind you of failure and regret, but they're still gently envowen in the text so you can absorb them without any harm. It's the strongest experimental novella I read since I discovered Ferlighetti's "Her".
February 5, 2021
If anything Quin's portrayal of distance and time has only become more relevant as the internet has served to externalise the density and alienation that inhabits the minds of her characters.
A lazy way to describe this would be to say a fantastic puzzle containing the best aspects of Ballard, Burroughs and Woolf, but Quin is completely her own - a tremendous talent locked into her own tragedy. She deserved much better.
I'd recommend reading this in as few sittings as possible, let it sink in, come into focus then slip through your fingers - it's brilliant.
A lazy way to describe this would be to say a fantastic puzzle containing the best aspects of Ballard, Burroughs and Woolf, but Quin is completely her own - a tremendous talent locked into her own tragedy. She deserved much better.
I'd recommend reading this in as few sittings as possible, let it sink in, come into focus then slip through your fingers - it's brilliant.
December 16, 2017
Simply magnificent.
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