SOURCE: An afterword to Wild Roses: A Story Followed by a Love Letter, McClelland & Stewart Limited, 1976, pp. 120-23.

Bednarski is an educator and critic who has translated several of Ferron's works into English, including Wild Roses. In the following essay, she remarks on the theme of insanity in Wild Roses and examines the novel's distinctive qualities.

By now Jacques Ferron needs little introduction to English Canadian readers. Acclaimed for over a decade in Quebec, he is rapidly gaining the recognition he deserves in the rest of the country. But as a writer he is many-sided, elusive, and Wild Roses may well come as a surprise to those who feel they already know his work. Disconcerting in its simplicity, almost Victorian in tone, it lacks the fantasy, the baroque complexity of his other books. Readers accustomed to Ferron's mordant wit and black humour will find this novel unexpectedly sober...