Habilis

Quinn draws the reader through a surreal labyrinth in her beautiful if uneven debut. Told alternatingly in vignettes and placards from a museum exhibition, the narrative follows Lucy as she spends the night in a museum-turned-disco (“It’s radical I know, but we were facing bankruptcy,” her curator-friend Dina explains of the hybrid concept). Lucy was left on a train as a baby, and while the placards in the museum trace the evolution of humankind, the vignettes trace Lucy’s personal history and her unknowable lineage. Each series of texts mirrors Lucy’s life; for example, Lucy has recently learned that she is losing her ability to speak, and the placards dive into language acquisition theory and evolutionary perspectives on language. Things get stranger as Lucy moves toward the center of the museum; when she finally reaches it, she encounters a longer, nonlinear placard about British anthropologist Mary Leakey, an Indian indentured laborer working on the Uganda Railway, and a curator working in the National Archives. While an interesting formal move on Quinn’s part, the story itself seems to sometimes get lost in its own structure. Still, the prose is often luminous. Though Quinn tends to stagger in her ambition, there’s much to admire. (Sept.)