The story is already approaching popular legend status. Indeed, it won’t be surprising if future writers attempting the same thing are said to be “trying a Trevor Ferguson.”

It goes like this: Critically acclaimed but popularly neglected literary novelist, on the cusp of 50, finds himself staring down the career void. After the figurative dark night of the soul he makes a last-ditch stab at... READ MORE

Most Montrealers who’ve read Jack Todd in The Gazette over the last dozen years or so, first as a city columnist, now as a sports columnist, know that the number of times he’s been right about one thing or another pretty much matches the number of times he’s been wrong. As a judge of character he’s had his good and bad days too. If he likes you, you’re a hero; if he doesn’t, you’re a zero. If you ... READ MORE

The Madame Paul Affair marks a turning point in the career of internationally acclaimed Montreal comic artist Julie Doucet. Her new graphic novel is Doucet’s first book not reprinted from her popular comics series Dirty Plotte, which featured often controversial stories of menstruation, mutilation fantasies, and sex dreams.

Doucet initially self-published Dirty Plotte as cut-and paste-mini... READ MORE

The ordinary epistolary novel is akin to an archive, its narrative artifacts carefully assembled by an oblique hand. But the extraordinary Fairy Ring is a living museum reanimating the most affecting Victorian practices and obsessions: spiritualism, trephination, automatons, crypotmnesia, hysteria, morphine addiction, and glass harmonica virtuosity.

Clara Weiss, wife of malodorous mycologis... READ MORE