First published in 1972, Ann Quin’s fourth and final novel Tripticks is a wild ride through capitalist America and the English language. It is the darkest and most experimental novel from a writer renowned for writing darkly experimental novels. It is also very funny, a satirical road trip that follows a haunted anti-hero prone to paranoid episodes.
He is travelling across an anonymous American landscape while being pursued by his ex-wife and her new lover, the ‘schoolboy gigolo’. Where are they going? Nowhere, of course, but the journey to get there is exhilarating, taking us through surreal detours of seedy motels and orgiastic excess while the narrator tries to escape his past.
Written in a collage style, with a blurring between the present and the past, the prose is electric throughout, a kind of literary acid trip. There has been an overdue revival of this author’s work in recent years (a Quinaisance, if you will) and what is most striking is how glaringly modern it feels; as more and more writers try to break away from the conventional form of the novel, Quin was already doing it, and better, 50 years ago. A writer ahead of her time, producing timeless work.
Tripticks, Ann Quin (And Other Stories)
Price: £9.99. Info: here
words JOSHUA REES
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