From Publishers Weekly
Best known for her hilariously scabrous autobiographical comics series Dirty Plotte, Doucet originally serialized this short graphic novel in Montreal's weekly newspaper Ici. It's a curious memoir; the eponymous Madame Paul is the friendly, dotty janitor of the rooming house where Doucet and her boyfriend, Andr‚, live. Despite the on-site boyfriend, Madame Paul keeps trying to set up Doucet with her nephew, the building's landlord. Other tenants range from creepy to overtly violent. When Madame Paul disappears, Doucet and her friends investigate and get caught up in the janitor's even more mysterious family business. This sounds like the recipe for a conventional thriller, but the tone is more like a pleasantly rambling, anecdotal letter from a friend. Doucet's work can take a while to get used to: she's a stylist rather than a representational cartoonist, and her characters are big-headed, lopsided, wrinkly masses of flesh. She writes in the distinctively awkward but comic cadences of a Francophone with wobbly English ("Hm... Madame Paul is still being absent"). But she's also a natural, albeit eccentric, storyteller, and every messy detail crammed into each panel of the book indicates how much she loves to draw out the subtle comedy in ordinary things. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Review
"Spunky and smart, Doucet stands out for her engaging combination of a cartoonish style and frank realism." --Kirkus Reviews



Book Description
Julie Doucet and her boyfriend find a new apartment with cheap rent and a string of nutty neighbors. One ex-con “breaks out” of his apartment by smashing his own window. Another man attempts to kill himself by stuffing his head in a gas oven. But perhaps the oddest person of all is the landlady herself, Madame Paul, who one day mysteriously disappears...

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Julie Doucet`s eagerly-anticipated fourth new book is set against the backdrop of an apartment building full of an idiosyncratic assortment of oddball neighbors. This autobiographical story begins as Julie and her boyfriend find a new apartment with cheap rent. What appears to be a promising move at first is offset when they meet a string of nutty neighbors: one ex-con `breaks out` of his apartment by smashing his own window; another man attempts to kill himself by stuffing his head in a gas oven. But perhaps the oddest person of all is the landlady herself, Madame Paul, who never fails to be both amused and excited by the ongoing events in her building. Boldly drawn and told from her wry, deadpan perspective, The Madame Paul Affair promises to be one of Julie Doucet`s best novellas to date!

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly