Three - (British Literature) by Ann Quin (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This enigmatic novel, from one of Britain's most important writers of the post-war avant-garde, explores suicide, marriage and class.

S has disappeared from Ruth and Leonard's home in Brighton. Suicide is suspected. The couple, who had been spying on their young lodger since before the trouble, begin to pour over her diary, her audio recordings and her movies - only to discover that she had been spying on them with even greater intensity. As this disturbing, highly charged act of reciprocal voyeurism comes to light, and as the couple's fascination with S comes to dominate their already flawed marriage, what emerges is an unnerving and absorbing portrait of the taboos, emotional and sexual, that broke behind the closed doors of 1950s British life.

Review Quotes

"The amount of wit and beauty Three finds in its own uncertainty makes it one of the most compelling novels of its time." -Juliet Jacques, Music & Literature

"Exquisitely written from the first page to the last." --The Scotsman

"'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 understood she was on to something new." --Deborah Levy

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. 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. 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.