Une Vie Inutile is Simon Paquet's second novel published at one of my favourite small presses, Héliotrope. Unlike the life of the main character implied by the book's title, it is far from being a useless read. I'm going to urge all of you French-reading bros and babes to get interested in some local franco literature because the voice of the main character, Normand, is everything that is great about so much francophone Québécois writing. He is cynical, self-deprecating, with a tar-black sense of humour and just the appropriate pinch of suicidal tendencies.

Failure to Thrive is the funny and often over-the-top debut novel of McGill alumnus Jeff Oliver, which was launched at this weekend's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. Published by Montreal's very own DC Books, home to many titles by some of this city's current greats, I have a lot of faith that this will be the first of many for the Toronto-born writer.

While reading Gavin McInnes's "How to Piss in Public", I often felt like I needed to wash my hands because of the amount of testosterone that seeps out it. To call Gavin McInnes sexist is a gross (and I mean that in every sense of the word) understatement and one that would probably prompt him to whip his dick out and shake it in that statement's face.

When I first started reading Montreal author Robert Pobi's first novel, Bloodman, I was happy to be pulled into a thriller-detective story from a different angle. The main character's personal issues with his estranged alcoholic-artist-madman father are what makes him return to his Montauk childhood home rather than the gruesome murders that are about to take place.

LEITMOTIV, a French play put on by Decourse Théâtre opened last night to a full audience at Théâtre La Chapelle. The Decourse team is composed of Andréanne Bernard, �milie Cormier and Anaïe Dufresne, three up-and-coming extremely imaginative graduates of l'�cole de Théâtre de l'UQAM.

Could Be: New Fiction is the title of James (Jim) Little's latest... publication. It's difficult to stick a genre label to this 70 page book published by Mezzoforte, as it's a bit of a mishmash of Little's work.