The Past at Our Feet
by Lynn Diamond

Guernica Editions is pleased to present Lynn Diamond's The Past at Our Feet. This page will provide you with an introduction to the book and its contents. If you'd like to explore more work by other poets when you're finished, click here to return to the introductory page or click on one of the names below to go directly to that poet's page:

Claude Beausoleil | Nicole Brossard | Carole David | Lynn Diamond | Hélène Dorion | Louise Dupré | Émile Nelligan | Anne Claire Poirier | Philippe Poloni | France Théoret

The Past at Our Feet

By Lynn Diamond

A novel
Translated by Jo-Anne Elder
Prose Series 69
ISBN 1-55071-192-X
128 pages
$15 Canada – $13 U.S.A.

Three women offer glimpses into fifty years in the life of a family brought together for twelve days by the death of one of its members. In short fragments and understated language, the novel offers insights into the moral and social climate of the last half of the twentieth century, as the narrators share their stories, telling of their coming of age, family secrets, fears, needs, hopes, tensions about race and sexuality, dreams and loves.

The future, the present which is always tentative, the destiny that is never quite within reach, converge with the past. Each of the women has her own version, and each one weighs the possibilities and inaccuracies
before her and behind her. The behaviours, events and perspectives are set out and left open for the reader to assess and understand in their
complexity and their contexts. The scenes are strung together like samples of experience connected by a powerful and engaging sense of the immediate real.

Lynn Diamond published Le passé sous nos pas with Triptyque in 1999. She is considered one of the finest writers in Quebec today.

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