It’s difficult to avoid being charmed by O’Neil’s satire of life among the natives of inner Montreal. Her heroine, Noushka Trembley, navigates the treacherous shores of nationalist snobbery and masculine megalomania to emerge somehow a little stronger and, amazingly, somewhat sober.

In this novel, Quebec is really a distinct society with its celebrity obsession, Catholic priests who covet story-telling children, and biker capitalists.

Or maybe not so distinct. All Canada is a little bit obscene.

The scene is the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty, and background is Canada’s refusal to accept Quebec as a distinct society and left it out of Canada’s Constitution. It is still, in my opinion, a national disgrace not for Quebec but for Canada.

Nicolas and Noushka, twins born and then almost immediately abandoned in a kind of virgin birth tumble in the manger. English and French. Male and Female. Beauty and Beastliness. Right and Wrong.

There is love story built in between Mary Magdalene who becomes the Virgin Mary in a cockeyed telling of the story where Jesus saves his tormentors the trouble by doing himself in.

Where O’Neil’s structure struggles a little in a rambling narrative she recovers in astonishingly beautiful prose and soaring imagination, comparable with Henry Fielding or Lawrence Sterne or some of the great Russian satirists. (And nobody accused Sterne of a rambling narrative?)

What Mordecai Richler did for Montreal Jews, she does for its Catholics. ( )

This was beautiful. Hard to read, as it is hard to read a novel in which people continue making terrible choices for about 90% of the book--but the terrible choices are consistent with their characters and expectations, and the writing is so lovely, and the details so complete, that I just loved it.

A month or so ago I listened to a presentation she gave in which she described her childhood and her relationship with her father (link: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/writer-heather-o-neill-finds-wisdom-in-an-eccentri.... While the stories she writes are clearly not her own, I suspect she is writing what she knows, and it shows. Her work is convincing and has an authority that someone from a more privileged background would lack, IMO. (And the talk is beautiful, so listen to it regardless ;) ). ( )

Quirky and full of O'Neill's wit and whimsy. ( )

"It felt like I was doing something terrible when I said oui. But God help me, I wanted to see what was on the other side of that word."

At the outset of this novel it’s unclear whether you should expect anything much to happen. Nouschka Tremblay’s problems - an absent mother and a narcissistic father, a cherished but toxic brother, and a general sense of aimlessness - are not presented in a way that cries out for dramatic resolution, and indeed only partial resolution is given. She experiences many things, but changes only subtly. What makes it so charming to spend time inside Nouschka’s head is O’Neill’s writing: this book is permeated with lovely similes and metaphors and beautifully-worded observations about life. ( )

There are two compelling reasons to read this book. First is the story - a rather disturbing, wild tale of the twin children of a fallen Quebecois singing star. The children have been abandoned by both parents and although they live with their grandfather, they are rather feral, disturbingly emotionally dependent and self-destructive. The story takes place in the St. Laurent neighborhood and the latest separation referendum is the backdrop and a catalyst. It was hard to watch these characters continually make horrible decisions, it was hard to turn away. O'Neill weaves the perspective of the "YES" side of the referendum voters into her story, interesting to me as an anglophone ex-Montrealer who was living in Toronto at the time! The connection and the charisma of the twins is both their salvation and their possible downfall, and the reader watches as they try to save each other and themselves.

The second reason to read this book is the writing. There are sentences in this book that are so stunningly beautiful and insightful and truthful that they are almost a distraction. Other reviewers have quoted quite a few, and so I won't repeat them, but this book should be used as a textbook for every creative writing course ever taught going forward. There are phrases that are so powerful they could be their own chapters; they crystalize situations, emotions, lives...they are brilliant. ( )