Author(s): Ann Quin; Joshua Cohen (Introduction by)

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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.

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THOMAS'S REVIEW:
Boredom is a sub-optimal mode, he thinks, but it is at least a functional mode compared with the revulsion it conceals, boredom at least connects one end of the day to the other, boredom is doubtless detrimental but it is by definition tolerable, let us all hope for boredom. That is not a good way to start his review, he thinks, it has some bearing on the book but it is not a good introduction to the book. Two is a situation of stasis, he thinks, three is dynamic, three is the catalyst that reveals the harms hidden in two, the harms that mathematics suppressed mathematics reveals, or not mathematics, physics perhaps, or chemistry, more likely. This also is not a good way to start. Well, he thinks, the review is far enough through not to worry any longer about starting it, a bad start is at least a start, that is something, I can adjust the performance using the choke, or perhaps the throttle, I need to find out the difference between these two obstructions, he thinks, these two forms of respiratory impediment, our relationship with engines is a violent one, he thinks, and this thought stalls the review. There is no access to the interior save through performance, he thinks, restarting, there is perhaps only performance, who can know, a middle class couple converse, the words pass between them but also bounce off their surroundings, language is a force-field, he thinks, a sonar, and a conversation is the pattern of disturbance, the pattern of interference, produced by two emitters, or should that be transmitters, of language. In this book, he thinks, Quin reproduces, well actually produces, that disturbance, those two voices, the Ruth voice and the Leon voice, as they run together as one entity, caught on the page, as if there is anything about a novel that is not on the page. In the Ruth-and-Leon sections of the novel, these verbal slurries, that is not the word, are both Ruth’s and Leon’s, caught on the framework of descriptions as bald and precise and mundane as stage directions, they are stage directions in the past tense, so hardly directions, stage descriptions perhaps. We learn that S, a younger, working-class woman who had lived with them, has committed suicide by drowning, Quin’s fate eventually incidentally, she left a note, but they still hope it might have been an accident. Are they guilty? In S’s room they find some tapes she has recorded, and her journals, and these are transcribed, if that is the word, inscribed is more accurate perhaps but we have to play the fiction game so transcribed is the better word, in other sections of the novel, but Ruth and Leon do not find either the absolution nor the indictment they both hope for and fear in these tapes and these journals, the tapes and the journals merely complicate the picture, add other layers of performance, leave more unsaid than said. The more that is unsaid, the greater the weight of what is unsaid, the stronger its gravity, the more distorted the said, the said, even in its utter mundanity, points always at the source of its distortion. As the book progresses, though progresses is not the word, there is no progress in Quin, we read also a tape made by Ruth and a diary written by Leon as, respectively, Leon and Ruth gain access to them, they take access, if that is the way to put it. There is no progress but the tension increases, tension in the past, if that which is in the past can be said to increase, each mundanity is freighted, that is not the word, with the catalytic action of each one upon each other two, a sexual static that builds and cannot discharge but reveals ultimately the fundamental destructive incompatibility not only of Ruth and Leon but of any combination of Ruth and Leon and S, and, perhaps, of any persons whatsoever, if Quin held this misanthropic view, perhaps she did. The instance of sexual violence eventually revealed is no surprise, but its awfulness floods backwards through all that precedes it in the book. Boredom is all that holds the horrible at bay, but the horrible is no less horrible for that. 

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Review: Praise for Three----'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----'An intriguing and successful novel, and remarkably contemporary in its stylistic sophistication.' Brian Evenson----Praise for the Author----'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

Author 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. 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 last unfinished 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, followed by Three in 2020.