A Review of Issa Quincy’s AbsenceIn Issa Quincy’s debut novel, Absence, the unnamed narrator mythologizes a series of figuresthat he directly or indirectly encounters, including a disgraced teacher and the student he seduced and forever changed; a lonely bus driver in Boston; a disabled landlord who mourns the lesbian aunt his family abandoned; and other strangely compelling people. Eventually, there is sickness, eventually there isbetrayal, eventually madness, eventually poverty, eventually loneliness. The unnamed, unseen,and rarely heard narrator seems to be taking on the erstwhile absence of these abandoned peopleso that they might become present. The narrator (and Quincy) seem to be wagering that thisnarratorial absence will allow their subjects to come into focus and be seen clearly, fully. Does Absence as it praises the winter landscape for doing, show “death, pleasure, ecstasy, frivolity, poverty, and secrecy”?