Shakespeare & Co.

An Independent Bookstore

Store Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-6pm / Sun 11am-5pm

Local to-your-door delivery is suspended; mail order is available, as is local curbside pickup. Call the shop (406 549-9010) or place an order online.

Shakespeare & Co. is an independent full-service bookstore in Missoula, MT. We sell new books, kids books, gifts, journals, cards, t-shirts, gift certificates and more.

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Ted McDermott - The Minor Outsider

Tuesday, June 27: Ted McDermott, based in Butte, joins us for a reading on the release day of The Minor Outsider, his new novel set here in Missoula. 7pm.

"The Minor Outsider is a major debut. McDermott's witty and stirring love story tracks so many of the wonderful ways we doom our happiness. It's thrillingly sad! And quite funny." – Sam Lipsyte

"A round of applause for Ted McDermott, please. He's earned it. The Minor Outsider is a spirited, audacious, and drolly funny debut novel." – Patrick deWitt

"Let me tell you what I love about this book: its unflinching honesty. How many books can you say this about? The Minor Outsider may be a first novel, but there's a lifetime of observation behind it. Ted McDermott knows us - all our flaws, all our vanities, and yes, all the little things that make our hearts leap. As humane a new book as I've read in a long, long time." – Peter Orner

“Wry, sharp-eyed, fresh as mountain air.” – Jonathan Trigell

Ed and Taylor, both aspiring young writers, fall in love during a summer of aimless drinking and partying in their university town of Missoula, Montana. Lonely and looking for love, they connect despite their profound differences: Ed is brooding, ambitious and self-destructive, living in denial of a mysterious tumor spreading from his limbs to his brain. Taylor is positive, full of hope and emotional generosity, but like everyone, she has her limits. Their difficult relationship is intense, exciting, yet doomed from the start, complicated further when Taylor becomes pregnant. As Ed resists the harmony she brings to his life, Taylor's need to protect herself and their child also grows, until a dramatic finale.

Ted Mc Dermott's stark book speaks truthfully and with a touch of dark humor for and to today's generation of young people trying to find hope in what feels to many like an existential void. The Minor Outsider will be read as the young literary voice of our dark times.

Ted McDermott's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in VICEThe BelieverThe Portland ReviewThe Minus Times, and elsewhere. In 2009, he was nominated for the Essay Prize. He has been a baker, a mover, a cook, a college instructor, an encyclopedist, and a reporter. He lives in Butte, Montana. The Minor Outsider is his first novel.

103 S. 3rd St. W., Missoula, MT, 59801  

(406) 549-9010

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