Bit by Bit

Think of any major novel from the nineteenth century and there’s a decent chance it first appeared as a serial in a newspaper or magazine. But by the end of the twentieth century, radio and television — along with the increased affordability of paperbacks — had made the widely popular form all but obsolete.

Then, in the spring of 2023, the editor-in-chief of the Montreal Gazette, Bert Archer, asked Heather O’Neill if she wanted to develop a serialized story in the paper’s pages. “I thought it was a terrible idea,” she recalls, “one that might drive me mad, but I said yes immediately.” The result, originally titled Mystery in the Métro, ran every Saturday from May to December, alongside illustrations by the novelist’s daughter, Arizona O’Neill. The thirty chapters have now been gathered, with no editorial changes, into Valentine in Montreal.

O’Neill hails the Victorian serial, particularly the work of Charles Dickens, as an...