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Fiction Review: Berg by Ann Quin
Ann Quin’s novel is a neglected masterpiece
Ann Quin
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Berg
by Ann Quin
(And Other Stories, £10)
FOLLOWING the warmly received publication of Ann Quin’s previously uncollected shorter prose, And Other Stories continue their “Quinaissance” with their reissue of her marvellous 1964 debut Berg.
It’s a gritty yet deliciously strange masterpiece of British fiction in which a man called Berg, who’s changed his name to Greb, comes to a seaside town intending to kill his father and thus begins the quest of a hair restoration product salesman to wreak vengeance on his absent parent.
Refracted through Berg’s capacious and immersive interior monologue, ranging from tersely observed seedy details to more filigreed existential musings, Quin’s supple prose propels the narrative along, seducing the reader into accepting the more bizarre facets of her narrative as he becomes sexually entangled with his father’s mistress and the plot climaxes with the mutilation of a ventriloquist’s dummy.
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