SOURCE: "Jacques Ferron," in Profiles in Canadian Literature, Volume 5, edited by Jeffrey M. Heath, Dundurn, 1986, pp. 121-28.

In the essay below, Bednarski surveys Ferron's works, focusing on such themes as Quebec-English relations, death, insanity, and alienation.

There is one title which more than any other sums up the literary universe of Jacques Ferron. It is Contes du pays incertain (Tales from the Uncertain Country), that of the Québec doctor's first book of short stories, which won the Governor General's Prize for 1962 and gained him his first true recognition as a writer. [In an endnote, the critic explains that "[Tales from the Uncertain Country] was the English title of a collection published in 1972 by Anansi, but of the eighteen stories translated, only ten were from Contes du pays incertain. The French collection is translated for the first time in its entirely in Selected Tales of Jacques Ferron."] This...