Ann Quin's first novel has been compared to the fiction of Samuel Beckett and Nathalie Sarraute. Against the backdrop of a gritty seaside town, an absurd and brutal plot develops involving three characters: Alistair Berg, his father, and their mutual mistress. In his attempt to kill his father, Berg mutilates a ventriloquist's dummy, almost falls victim to his father's mistaken sexual advances, and is relentlessly taunted by a group of tramps. Disturbing and at times startlingly comic, Berg chronicles the interrelations among these three characters as they circle one another in an escalating spiral of violence.A member of a group of British avant-garde writers that included B. S. Johnson and Eva Figes, Ann Quin published four novels before her death at the age of 37.