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Passages

4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 · rating details · 38 ratings · 6 reviews

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 sp...more

Paperback, 112 pages

Published January 1st 2003 by Dalkey Archive Press (first published 1969)

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Jan 31, 2013 Mariel rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: there has been a death recently no one occupied the body since

Recommended to Mariel by: a dog with a rotten tongue hesitates to eat the carcass

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 wi...more 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.

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.(less)

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Dec 20, 2012 Jafar rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 o...more

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Jul 23, 2011 Jon added it

I 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 perspecti...more

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Nov 15, 2010 Perry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Passages is the third or fourth Ann Quin novel I've read, and it's about a woman and her lover who go to this mysterious island to search for the woman's brother. Like other of her novels the plot doesn't really matter as much as, most of the time, she focuses more on the relationship between two people. Almost in kind of a character study way. The characters seemed pretty existential, didn't really do much besides walk around and have sex with each other and fight.

So the plot is thrown out in f...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: milestones

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 "He...more

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Oct 02, 2007 Fenixbird SandS rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: ANYONE IN A RELATIONSHIP

HELP! GREAT OVERVIEW OF THE VARIETY OF PEOPLE AND THEIR CHOICES BREAKS DOWN THE PASSAGES OF LIFE THROUGH THE STAGES...DECADE BY DECADE....PSYCH DEVELOPMENT

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About Ann Quin

Ann 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 whe...more

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Books by Ann Quin

Anti-Story: An Anthology of Experimental Fiction

The Review Of Contemporary Fiction: Rick Moody, Ann Quin, Silas Flannery

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