Marion Quednau’s collection Paradise, Later Years plays with the language of juxtaposition, nothing is straight on; if there’s quiet beauty by the sea, there’s a passing warship. Quednau’s lyricism, whether of river or lover, bears witness to relationships transformed by the tension—and surprise—of setting one thing against another. The verse is often irreverent, the humour touching on the pain of recognition, making us shift our boundaries. This book is a brave road trip where no one comes out with the same skin of escape, or want, but rather with new forms of redemption.

Marion Quednau has won numerous awards for both her fiction and her poetry, including a National Magazine Award, and the People’s Choice Award when shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Her fiction has received critical acclaim, the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, when the late Mordecai Richler judged the writing in The Butterfly Chair to be “imaginative and informed by intelligence.” Quednau’s short fiction has appeared in a variety of literary magazines and has won kudos in competition. The title story in Sunday Drive to Gun Club Road was shortlisted for the Carter V Cooper Award in 2019 and appeared in the CVC9 Anthology in 2020. Quednau lives on the Sunshine Coast, BC.

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