Bottle Rocket Hearts at Cormorant Books

Bottle Rocket Hearts

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Synopsis

Winner of the 2008 Dayne Ogilvie Grant

Welcome to Montreal in the months before the 1995 referendum. Riot Grrl gets bought out and mass marketed as the Spice Girls, and gays are gaining some legitimacy, but the queers are rioting against assimilation, cocktail AIDS drugs are starting to work, and the city walls on either side of the Main are spray-painted with the words YES or NO. It's been five years since the OKA crisis and the sex garage riots; revolution seems possible, when you're 18, like Eve. Eve is pining to get out of her parent's house in Dorval and find a girl who wants to kiss her back. She meets Della - mysterious, defiantly non-monogamous, an avid separatist and ten years older. Initially taken in by a mutual other-worldly sense of rapture, they hole up in Della's apartment trying to navigate spaces of jealousy when a biker bomb goes off down the street. Their explosive beginning makes way for an even more volatile relationship that spans the following two years. Answering an ad for a roommate at the gay bookstore, Eve meets a new family of friends: Seven, homo-core sweetheart who defies all clichés, and Rachael, type-A activist and motivated poet. On the night of the 1995 referendum politics and romance come to a head and Eve's naiveté begins to fade. From naïve teenager to hot shot tough girl, Eve decides her own fate.

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Links

Bottle Rocket Hearts @ The Blog

Media

Official trailer for Bottle Rocket Hearts, featuring Toronto band Dance Yourself to Death:

Zoe's YouTube trailer for Bottle Rocket Hearts:

Zoe Whittall Interview on MTV Live

Zoe Whittall Interview on ProudFM Part I | Part II

Reviews

"Zoe Whittall might just possibly be the cockiest, brashest, funniest, toughest, most life-affirming, elegant, scruffy, no-holds-barred writer to emerge from Montreal since Mordecai Richler ... Bottle Rocket Hearts is a major statement about lessening unhappiness by overcoming the small dishonesties that creep into everyday life."
— The Globe and Mail

"Zoe Whittall's debut novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts, is an achingly good read, bringing moments of joy to the reader along with heartache and sorrow ... Bottle Rocket Hearts is full of sarcasm, name-dropping and style punctuated with a queer, feminist twist ... This book comes alive for the reader and is a lovely coming-of-age story for women to reflect on and perhaps even relate to their daughters."
— The Calgary Herald

"Bottle Rocket Hearts is assured, gripping and sincere ... [Whittall's] characters are richly detailed and wonderfully, quirkily vibrant ... The people in this book jump out of the pages and into your heart. Bottle Rocket Hearts is a delightful novel whose characters will stay in my thoughts for a long time to come."
— Xtra!

"Bottle Rocket Hearts is about coming of age, identity, politics, the nature of love and who constitutes family. Anyone who is different in any way will relate ... Whittall's background as a poet shines in every paragraph. Her poetic voice hits hard and with beauty ... Bottle Rocket Hearts is a compelling story told by a writer skilled in her craft. It leaves me wanting more."
— The Vancouver Sun

"Bottle Rocket Hearts, the debut novel from Zoe Whittall, is a coming-of-age tale that goes down like a cherry popsicle. It’s a delicious, bright suburban delicacy melting in the inner-city sun."
— NOW Magazine

"Poppy, absorbing and subversive ... A short, snappy tale of youth slumming, first love and its nasty symptoms."
— ffwd

"Even with heavy themes of loss, Bottle Rocket Hearts is a fun romp through Montreal's 1990s counterculture."
— The Gazette

"Bottle Rocket Hearts brings to mind Jeanette Winterson circa Written on the Body with an adolescent, punk-tinged flare. This is a believable, flesh and blood narrator whose flaws make her all the more enduring."
— matrix

"Whittall's writing is evocative, youthful and raw."
— Eye Weekly

"Self-proclaimed misfit Whittall is quicky carving out a place for queers on the esoteric bookshelves of Canadian literature ... a post-riot grrl coming-of-age tale, Bottle Rocket Hearts ... makes reliving the decay of adolescence bearable - enjoyable even. Combining queercore, sexuality, and politics, Whittall licks every last ounce of icing from the sugary layer cake of first heartbreak, while savoring the potent ingredient of self-deprication. This Toronto-based writer isn't just witty, she gets it."
— Bitch

"The novel is a well-constructed and well-written queer urban twist on the Bildungsroman ... There is no doubt that Zoe Whittall has a poet's heart. She doesn’t indulge in long, flowy passages, but tosses out seemingly careless lines with aplomb."
— Herizons