By Melissa Bull
Melissa Bull’s debut short story collection The Knockoff Eclipse hums with the immediacy of distant and future worlds. Firmly rooted in the streets and landmarks of Montreal and its many neighbourhoods and subcultures, Bull’s characters shine with the dirt of digging just deep enough.
Dark like Duras, flippant comme Sagan, with elements of the surreal running through, these Montreal stories are modern feminist fables for the reader who is decidedly uninterested in upholding the moral of the story as it’s been traditionally told.
MEDIA PRAISE:
“Bull’s eye is unfailingly precise, and the best of these stories distill warped vectors of humanity into dry-ice absurdity and pitiful rawness. … Bull is a master provocateur, working through subtle, overlooked shades of experience to find some new level of exactitude in emotional injury.”
— Montreal Review of Books
“… Bull’s stories never have pat endings, adding an extra layer that enriches the collection.” — Quill & Quire
ADVANCE PRAISE:
“Melissa Bull is George Saunders and Clarice Lispector and Lorrie Moore and none of these people — she’s her own vivid, mordant, heartbreaking story-writer, a teller of present and future Montreals, where desire and language and memory tangle in the alleys.”
— Sean Michaels, author of Us Conductors
“In The Knockoff Eclipse, Melissa Bull captures the city of Montreal: its myths, history, languages, and energy. Reminiscent of Gallant’s Montreal Stories, these tales grasp the grit of a contemporary Montreal and all of its human struggles . . . Contrary to its title, this collection is luminous.” — Gillian Sze, author of Panicle
“Wry, weird, and funny, Melissa Bull’s collection looks at how we are deeply entangled with place as well as with each other. Holding fast to the senses, they are compassionate, dark, and true.” — Alison Winch, author of Trouble, and Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood
“This is the world I want to inhabit: full of gloriously flawed human beings, singular and part of a brilliant inclusive weave. These tales give me hope for the future.” — Sina Queryas, author of My Ariel, MxT, Expressway, Lemon Hound, and Autobiography of Childhood
Melissa Bull is a writer and editor, as well as a French-to-English translator of fiction, essays, and plays. She is the editor of Maisonneuve magazine’s “Writing from Quebec” column and has published her poetry, essays, articles, and interviews in a variety of publications including Event, Lemon Hound, subTerrain, Prism, and Matrix. Her collection of poetry, Rue, was published in 2015, and her collection of short stories, The Knockoff Eclipse, was published in 2018. Her translation of Nelly Arcan’s Burqa de chair was published by Anvil Press in 2014, and her translation of Marie-Sissi Labrèche’s novel, Borderline, is forthcoming. Melissa lives in Montreal.
