BOOKS

Quinn's Passage

blazeVox books, 2005
185 pages, 5 x 8"
$16.00 Paperback, 978-0975922774

From the publisher: Quinn, a sculptor literally and figuratively at the end of his rope, flees New York City for a capeside artists' colony. Fixated by trash, and reading Woolf’s The Waves, Quinn trawls the streets and beaches of the little fishing village, tentatively exploring his relationship to the place, his art, his new friends, and himself. Moods of weather and landscape suffuse this sparely written tale that, like sunlight that pierces storm-clouds, illuminates exactly how much is at stake in Quinn's haunting search for the sublime.

Praise

“Quinn's Passage is a delicious book, evoking the helical flows of its patron saint, Virginia Woolf, as well as the elegiac patterns of writers like Carole Maso in its pilgrimage of an artist's soul through a world recognizable to any of us. The novel combines a deft, poetic ear and nimble erudition and poetry to evoke the rhythm of time, a tidal succession of events, memories, visions, and passions which embody ‘the ocean dance’ that its title character ‘choreographs under his breath.’”
—Michael Joyce

"The will to be transformed away from the senses via the senses is a sensualist's mission. It is Quinn's desire, as it is the desire of the gods. The reader will see that such a desire infuses language with a passion for breathing and utterance equally."
—Fanny Howe

"A beautifully cadenced and charmed performance by a young writer of great soul and promise."
— Carole Maso