Quinx, or, The ripper's tale
a novel
"The past has just finished becoming the present, and here I am," muses Aubrey Blanford as he returns to his beloved and mysterious home in Avignon. It is the aftermath of World War II, a time most particularly of ends and beginnings, and a time most particularly of ends and beginnings, and a time for the healing of wounds, both old and new. For Blanford and his friends especially, it is a time when the circles close, when the past, suddenly chanced upon when rounding a bend, becomes the future. Although in a moment of despair Blanford has discarded the pages of the novel that was his life, he returns to Avignon in the irreverent and transcendent company of Rob Sutcliffe, a character so companionable that Blanford would have had to invent him if he hadn't existed already. They are joined by Constance, the psychoanalyst whom Blanford has loved through the years of pain, who has now agreed to care for the very serious wound that Blanford received in the closing days of the war.^ With her, however, comes Sylvie, the beautiful schizophrenic and brilliant poet, now linked to Constance in both mind and body. These two couples are reunited with Lord Galen and the Prince, those men of practicality Western and Eastern, who have come to Avignon to search for the fabled treasure of the Templers, rumored to be hidden in the caves beneath the city. And, coincidentaly or not, all are joined by the gypsies of Europe, who have come to Avignon in riotous convocation to celebrate the feast of their patron, St. Sara. And it is in this glorious frenzy that a gypsy fortune teller reads three futures and starts Blanford, Constance, and the others on the final path toward their treasure, the "treasure guarded by dragons" that also hides the mystery of Livia, Constance's dead sister. As these intricately entwined stories and characters struggle to reconcile past, present, and future, Lawrence Durrell once again brings fiction into a new relationship with life.^ And as Quinx tells its own vibrant story, it also subtly echoes, illuminates, and enriches all the aspects of The Avignon Quintet, now fully revealed in all its rich invention, psychological truth, and delightful complexity. -- from dust jacket.
