"...stylish, if opaque, noir."
-Kirkus Reviews
Elsewhere, News & Links
Influences on Ray of the Star: Book 3
date: May 29, 2009
The third of five books that influenced the writing of Ray of the Star.
Ann Quin’s 1964 debut novel Berg famously begins with the following, set apart on its own page: “A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father….” The backbone of Berg‘s plot duly summarized, Quin goes on to give us a novel about how lives get lived in the odd torquing of language, or perhaps how odd lives get lived in the torquing of language. Berg/Greb, a traveling salesman (hair tonic) in an off season past its sales date “resort” town in England, lives in a highly active, highly interesting befuddlement that infects everything that surrounds him.
“Isn’t there a moment caught between two moods, that space within, separated from life, as well as death, when the sun is faced without blinking, when eternity lies here inside; no division whatsoever, simply a series of circular motivations?”
I hope so.
