No Grave for This Place

Judy Quinn
Translated by Donald Winkler


Awards: Prix Alain-Grandbois - finalist
Governor General's Literary Award - finalist

A rogue moose wanders into a suburb near Quebec city, tramples lawns and gardens, stumbles in and out of a swimming pool, is tracked by three gun toting heads of family who shoot it down just as a school bus goes by wherein a little girl is trilling “Three Little Kittens.” Thus begins No Grave For This Place, Judy Quinn’s bleak, ironic, and at times darkly comic tribute to Auberivičre, the neighbourhood where she grew up. Here “streets are landing strips / for planes that will never arrive,” the dead “descend / the steps of prefab houses / champagne flutes in their hands,” and a pack of cats “throws itself on the electric fences / surrounding our inner lives.” Quinn’s voice will resonate with all those who have, by association or from experience, tasted the cultural barrenness that can underlie civilized life.

Signal Editions
2020

Reviews

“This intense collection, which unfolds around loss and decay, finds its most beautiful embodiment in the precision of its gaze.” –Le Devoir

Judy Quinn was born in 1974, in Quebec City. She has published three novels and four collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Pas de tombeau pour les lieux (No Grave For This Place), was a finalist for the Prix Alain-Grandbois, and the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-language poetry.

Donald Winkler is a Montreal-based literary translator of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for French to English translation, most recently for Pierre Nepveu’s The Major Verbs in 2013.
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