Excellent read from a great author.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my review.

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me, I'm not quite sure what it was that didn't click for me as I've only ever DNF'd a handful of books my entire life but there was something I clearly wasn't feeling.

Quinn by Em Strang
Publication date: 2 March 2023
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⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3.5 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Oneworld Publications for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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Quinn is serving a life sentence for a crime he's convinced he hasn't committed. Surely the authorities have got it wrong, and when they find his childhood sweetheart, Andrea, his name will be cleared. His parole is drawing near when he receives an unexpected letter from Andrea's mother, Jennifer, who invites Quinn to share her home.
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What a strange little book that was. It's difficult to review as it doesn't have a plot as such, but the writing really carried me through.
The author is a poet, and this is very obvious in the cadence and lyricism of the prose. The story is told from Quinn's point of view and it is clear that he is someone who is deeply unwell, both mentally and physically. He suffers from vivid, scary and sometimes gruesome hallucinations, which means that on some occasions it's difficult to judge if something is really happening or if we are trapped in Quinn's mind.
Sentences, or even paragraphs, are repeated several times throughout the story, like the chorus of a song, and this adds to the confusion of Quinn's narration.
I actually wish the book had been longer and had delved deeper in the relationship between Quinn and Jennifer, and had spent a little more time with them both once Quinn starts caring for her as it is such an important and fascinating aspect of the story.
There is no resolution, there is no clear ending and a lot of the questions that I had as a reader were not answered and I didn't particularly mind that, but this is something to be aware of if you like neat and tidy endings; this is not that kind of book.

It's like a long poem in prose, not an easy read but a riveting one that I found enthralling. A short story but full of emotions, important topics like forgivness and guilt or memory.
It talks to to your heart and it's hard to forget.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

The author of the novel is a poet, novelist, workshop facilitator and Creative Writing Teacher, most noticeably and relevantly for this novel at Dumfries Prison – which is what lead her to this examination of “incarceration, male violence and radical forgiveness”. She has been writing the novel since 2019 and it was shortlisted (as a work in progress) for the 2019 Fitzcarraldo First Novel Prize, before being picked up for 2023 publication by Oneworld.

In form it is both short (less than 200 generously spaced pages), image filled and fragmentary – partly a long form poem although the author has said she preferred the novel form as “I tend to use poetry as a vehicle for exploring love, in particular spiritual love and [this novel is] to do with evil and excavating the masculine psyche in relation to violence”.

It is narrated by (Tomek) Quinn of mixed Irish/Polish parentage, and who is, we realise, serving a lengthy prison sentence for the murder of a girl Andrea who has been his friend, sweetheart and near-neighbour since he was 5-6 years old. Quinn himself though seems convinced Andrea is just missing although we quickly realise that his grasp on linear reality is as tenuous as his narrative voice is fractured.

At some point Quinn receives and ultimately reads a series of long handwritten letters from Andrea’s mother Jennifer. Written over a period of six years, they are for the most part blazingly accusatory – telling of her pain and hurt at the loss of Andrea (who was not just her beloved daughter but also her full time carer) and resulting hatred and cursing of Quinn. The last letter though tells of her realisation “slowly and with fierce reluctance – that there’s only one means to truly heal the pain and loss that you have bought to my life: somehow I have to find a way to forgive you. God help me!” and proposes the radical step, which she has agreed with the Parole Board, of Quinn being released to act as her live-in carer.

At least in Quinn‘s narrative this takes place (I was unclear if it did in reality) and Quinn goes to live with Jennifer, having to come to terms with the weight of what it is that Jennifer has offered him and whether he can accept her mercy and achieve some form of redemption.

But at the same time he immediately comes under the cynical suspicion of her neighbour Farah and ultimately things unravel.

Quinn ends where he begins – back in prison although perhaps closer to understanding his own actions and starting to come to terms with the consequences of them for him and for others.

Many phrases and images occur time and time again in the spiralling narrative.

As per her website, the author’s “writing preoccupations are with nature (birds and horses feature in almost all my poems) and spirituality”- and images and references to white swans (and their feathers) and to horses (“As a child I had been able to look at a horse and know gladness deep inside me. Something about the shape and the breath and the presence of the animal told me that life was good, that my body was worthy, that my heart was beating for a reason”) are integral to the text. Lavender is also key.

Recurring phrases include “Let it be know that I have suffered”, “My small extra bone tapped and ticked”, “Things have been done that hurt the mouth to speak of” and “Five years passed, or the sun and the moon had tricked me”

The book is also influenced by biblical quotes quoted (often out of context) to Quinn by his mother.

And one recurring passage must with a series of striking images (see my closing quote) must, the reader feels, relate to the point of Andrea’s death.

Overall, this was a distinctive and striking novel – but I was unclear that its form was solid enough to bear the weight of its important, but difficult, themes.

By any book which understands the fundamental importance of forgiveness is one to at least recommend.

A prisoner is serving a sentence for a murder he believes he hasn't committed, and when the woman is found he will be released - so he thinks. He spends his days in a surreal world of repetition, bizarre sightings and disturbing dreams.

The story is told in his distinctive voice, a narrative of his unaccountability, distorted memory and the pain these bring him. Symbols and motifs repeat often, with poetic frequency - like the passing of time, sunrise, the dark blue colour, almost black, and 'I have done nothing wrong.' As part of his parole and to come to terms with what he did, he moves in with the murdered woman's disabled mother to act as her carer at her request. Their relationship is complex and surrounded by more symbolism and lots of death.

​A strange and unusual short book, more poem than novel, that looks at the power of the mind when dealing with trauma. Original, abstract and very unsettling.

"‘This isn’t an act of disloyalty to Andrea. It’s an act of freedom for myself–at least that’s what I hope it is. I want to make peace with what I can’t change. Do you understand?’ I did not understand but nodded. Some things are beyond the mind’s understanding."

Quinn is the debut novel by poet Em Strang and was originally short-listed for the Fitzcarraldo Novel Prize. Published Jacques Testard subsequently introduced the author to an agent who eventually sold this to Oneworld, and my thanks to them for this ARC via Netgalley.

As well as recalling it from the Fitzcarraldo Prize I was attracted to it by an interview in the Guardian, in particula this welcome comment (the 196 pages are also generously spaced):

"Q: Quinn is just 196 pages long. Is that down to the poet it in you?

A: I think so. I just so love concision and I can’t stand waffling on. In a way, Quinn is a long-form poem. The fiction that I read and love is all short – so Claire Keegan’s work, Cynan Jones’s and Sadegh Hedayat, the Iranian writer’s. It’s an intense experience to read a short novel."

The novel draws on the author's experience as a creative writing tutor in the prison system, as the author explained when Oneworld won an auction for the rights:

"I’ve spent a decade working with long-term prisoners in Scotland, trying to understand and come to terms with notions of justice and responsibility: does guilt begin and end with the perpetrator of a violent act or are we all in some way culpable? It’s been a difficult book to write, not least because it focuses on male violence towards women – such a pressing issue of our times – and tries to treat Quinn as a whole person, rather than neatly labelling him. Sitting with that broader perspective has been profoundly unsettling, but necessary: how else can we arrive at a place where restorative justice might be possible?"

And her dedication includes thanks "to all the incarcerated men I have worked with since 2013."

It also builds on Marina Cantacuzino’s work with the Forgiveness Project, although the novel, bravely, approaches the topic from the first-person perspective of a male offender, the murderer of a young woman.

The novel opens (the heading "The sound of a woman praying" featuring in every chapter)

"PART I

The sound of a woman praying

1.
Things have been done that hurt the mouth to speak of. Let it be known that I have suffered. I was familiar with suffering in the way only some men are–it was in my blood. It was as though my ancestors had passed suffering on as a gift. A gift in dark blue, almost black wrapping paper that smelt of tar."

Our narrator is Tomas Quinn, who prefers to be known just my his last name, son of a Polish mother and Irish father, and in prison for the murder of a young woman, Andrea, his neighbour and close friend since childhood.

Quinn's narrative rather fractures time and place, his memories and his present reality overlayed, and he, in his mind, is falsely imprisoned and desparate to leave his cell to find the missing woman (he is also convinced one of the prime suspects is his prison guard).

"I stared at my plate, my hands in my lap. I did not want those words, as I knew they required the utmost patience of me, and it became clear, for the briefest moment, why I had been forced to become both master and servant of waiting. I knew how to wait. Nobody could tell me anything about waiting. It had become a deep art, a practice that I had been forcibly immersed in. It was like I had become waiting itself; I had stepped into the brick and cement clothing of waiting. It barely shifted on me and never creased. I could not be folded away neatly. Wait-bearer.2

Andrea's mother, Jennifer, whose has also known Quinn since he was a child, has been writing to him, initially her letters full of bitter recriminations but her final letter contains an unexpected invitation: with Quinn approaching parole eligibilty, Jennifer, who is terminally ill and with no daughter left to look after her, invites Quinn to become her live-in carer:

"These past six years have been a long and horrific journey. I’ve never hated a human being as much as I’ve hated you. You took away the one person in my life I loved beyond all others. I miss her every day, think about her every day. I’ve cried so much my head still hasn’t stopped aching. I thought I was going to die of heartache and I wanted to die. You’ll have read of the many days that I’ve cursed you. I can’t pretend that there aren’t still times I wish you dead. But as the years have passed and grief has emptied me, I’ve come to realise–slowly and with a fierce reluctance–that there’s only one means to truly heal the pain and loss that you’ve brought to my life: somehow I have to find a way to forgive you. God help me!"

The story that unfold is darkly beautiful, dislocating but poetic, and one where Quinn is drawn gradually to a reckoning for what he did.

Impressive and a strong contender for literary prizes.

Aaaahhh, Booker bait: The debut novel of a 52-year-old Scottish poet, written from the perspective of a convicted murderer who was raised in an abusive household and now encounters forgiveness by his victim's terminally ill mother. Of course the text also features all the good artsy stuff: Repetition of sentences to illustrate the mental traps and ruminations, we get animal metaphors (mutilated birds! the comfort of horses! the mythological swan!), surreal dreams, biblical references, symbols out of the natural world (lavender! mud! a pond!), you name it. Sounds a little contrived, you say, a little much? Well, I guess you're correct in my book, but then again, when I hear that the author started the novel out of a "movement practice", that already freaks me out (which is a statement about me, not about the author - you do you, Em Strang!).

And it's not like the novel doesn't work: We meet half-Polish protagonist Thomás Quinn in a jail cell - and he says that he is unsure what actually happened to his childhood sweetheart Andrea. Did he really murder her? Quinn receives a letter from Jennifer Holden (hello, To Kill A Mocking Bird - birds, again!), Andrea's dying, wheelchair-bound mother. She tells him that she decided to forgive him for her own sake and offers him early release if he agrees to become her caregiver. Quinn accepts and, under the eyes of a neighbor who fights his own demons, the two try to get to terms with their respective situations.

Strang does a good job pondering Quinn's incomprehensible crime, she resists the urge to explain human nature and instead aims to illuminate the brokenness of her characters and how they try to fix themselves or at least accept their fate and/or failures (the author talked about Kintsugi in this context, which seems like an apt comparison to me). In the end though, the potentially captivating dynamics between Quinn and Jennifer are overshadowed by the excessive metaphorical developments centering around the pond and the animals in the garden - which is particularly irritating as the dynamics between the odd pair and the bitter neighbor is explored so much better.

While I applaud Strang's ambition, I also think this text is overwritten and underdeveloped, too reliant on imagery and unevenly paced (I also don't buy the whole "it's a long form poem and deserves different standards" argument: See The Long Take, a novel-length long-form poem that works as a poem AND as a novel). "Quinn" is a decent novel, sharp and oscillating at times, but very rocky and too superficial at others.

This is one of those novels which you can easily tell is written by a poet. That's not a criticism but a warning to those who enjoy a traditional prose - this isn't for you.

However, it is a strange yet beautifully written novel that I think will appeal to those who love the English language