Ann Quin was an avant-garde working class British writer who sadly fell into obscurity after her death in 1973 but has retained a devoted cult of admirers. I was turned onto her work by Claire Louise-Bennett’s excellent novel Checkout 19 and knew I really wanted to read her debut novel, Berg.
And reader, what a wild novel it is. How would I describe Berg? It’s an existential, modernist British Oedipus; a delirious, psychologically-charged crime novel; a comedy of fuck-ups and inaction. It follows the trials and travails of one Alistair Berg, whose energy I can only describe as “Raskolnikov but sweatier”, as he moves to a seaside town to make a rather pathetic effort at both murdering the father who abandoned him as a child and seducing said father’s current mistress. Berg is in many ways a tragic hero, trying to assert his individuality in a society he feels alienated from and cast off by. He is also deadly serious, and forced by his sweaty paranoia to play an absolute fucking clown in a ridiculous farce of ever-increasing absurdity. Throughout, Quin deploys exciting prose that leverages staccato rhythms and fluidly moves between reality, remembrance, and psychic torment.
Is it a perfect book? No - it’s a bit patchy, sometimes unsatisfying and frustrating. And it certainly took me a bit of time to adjust to its rhythms. But once I did - damn this book is a ride, tragic and funny, beautiful and absurd, and very, very entertaining.
I’m very glad that I found Ann Quin - I’m really looking forward to reading more of her work. Reading this feels like discovering a hidden gem, and it’s a tragedy that she has been so forgotten.
