Bottle Rocket Hearts
by Zoe Whittall
Price: $19.95
Publication Date: April 14, 2007
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Synopsis:
Welcome to ’90s Montreal. It’s been five years since the OKA crisis and the sex garage riots; 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. Revolution seems possible to eighteen-year-old Eve, who 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: ten years older, mysterious, defiantly non-monogamous, and an avid separatist. Their explosive beginning and volatile relationship paves a path for the personal and political to collide on the night of the referendum.
ISBN: 9781897151068
Format: Trade Paperback
Size: 5.17" x 7.61"
Subjects:
FIC019000 FICTION / Literary
FIC018000 FICTION / LGBT / Lesbian
FIC037000 FICTION / Political
​Winner, 2008 Dayne Ogilvie Prize
Commended, 2011 CBC Canada Reads Top 10
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Reviews
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“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
“An achingly good read, bringing moments of joy to the reader along with heartache and sorrow … 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
“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.”
— Montreal 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
“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