A Double Room (Electric Literature's Recommended Reading Book 297) by Ann Quin

The story you’re about to read, “A Double Room,” chronicles the horrible suffocation of a bad affair, told in the staccato prose of the narrator’s unfiltered, inescapable perception. In her introduction to The Unmapped Country, in which A Double Room appears, Jennifer Hodgson tells us that Quin thought of the short story as a “space for readers to explore.” Having explored “A Double Room” I’m inclined to call it a small box story, one into which only a few sights and sounds have been allowed. Like much of Quin’s writing it is aesthetically and psychologically claustrophobic, but there’s a music to that claustrophobia — sad and somehow wretchedly funny too. - Danielle Dutton

About the Author: Ann Quin was a British writer, born in Brighton in 1936. Prior to her death in 1973, she published four novels: Berg (1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969), and Tripticks(1972). During her writing career, she lived between Brighton, London and the United States. She was prominent amongst a group of British experimental writers of the 1960s, which also included B.S. Johnson and Christine Brooke-Rose.

About the Recommender: Danielle Dutton is the author of Margaret the First, SPRAWL, and Attempts at a Life. Her writing has also appeared in Harper’s, BOMB, Fence, Noon, etc. In 2009 she founded the acclaimed independent press Dorothy, a publishing project. The press is named for Dutton’s great aunt, a librarian who drove a bookmobile through the backroads of Southern California, delivering books to underserved desert communities. Born and raised in California, Dutton now lives in Missouri with her husband and son, where she teaches literature and writing at Washington University in St. Louis.

About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction. Recommended Reading is supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.