The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781784290160

Price: £9.99

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

‘Like Angela Carter, she is relentlessly inventive’ Sunday Times
‘Entrancing and antic and sensual as a dream’ Guardian

The second novel by the author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel
Longlisted for the Baileys Prize 2015

At birth, Nouschka forms a bond with her twin that can never be broken.

At six, she’s the child star daughter of Quebec’s most famous musician.

At sixteen, she’s a high-school dropout kicking up with her beloved brother.

At nineteen, she’s the Beauty Queen of Boulevard Saint-Laurent.

At twenty, she’s back in night school. And falling for an ex-convict.

And it’s all being filmed by a documentary crew.

Reviews

Delightfully bizarre ...The author stuns with the vivid descriptions and metaphors that are studded throughout the book
Kirkus
An exuberantly written coming-of-age story ... Flashbulb-bright and memorable ... Nicolas and Nouschka are the beautiful, frozen, fetishised symbols of separatist Quebec. As they try to wrench themselves into being, their story is as entrancing and antic and sensual as a dream
Amity Gaige, Guardian
Heather O'Neill does it again! The Girl Who Was Saturday Night is full of quaking love and true sadness, family rackets, heart attacks, feral cats of all sorts, risky trysts, and reeling abandon. O'Neill's voice is singular, brave, magical, and bursting with stark beauty
Lisa Moore, author of February
Vivid and poignant . . . A deeply moving and troubling novel . . . Bombards the reader with piercing observations and magical imagery . . . Full of pathos, spirit and overwhelmingly, an iridescent innocence
Independent, on Lullabies for Little Criminals
Baby, like Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye, is totally believable . . . It will be interesting to see how [Heather O'Neill] next uses her powers of observation, understanding and narrative skills
Times Literary Supplement, on Lullabies for Little Criminals
O'Neill's vivid prose owes a debt to Donna Tartt's The Little Friend . . . the book's final pages are tear-jerkingly effective
Publishers Weekly, on Lullabies for Little Criminals
Freewheeling novel strewn with whimsical details . . . Noushka's tough-talking vulnerability will make you want to stick by her side as she finds her way in life
Daily Mail
No one's depiction of the shady side of life is as luminous - or as heart-wrenching - as Heather O'Neill's
Nancy Huston, author of Fault Lines
Well-constructed book full of poetic quirks . . . Her characters are personifications of Montreal and a dark mirror of celebrity culture
Irish News
An exuberantly written coming-of-age story . . . Flashbulb-bright and memorable . . . Nicolas and Nouschka are the beautiful, frozen, fetishised symbols of separatist Quebec. As they try to wrench themselves into being, their story is as entrancing and antic and sensual as a dream
Guardian
Freewheeling novel strewn with whimsical details . . . Nouschka's tough-talking vulnerability will make you want to stick by her side as she finds her way in life
Daily Mail
Book of the Week. Well-constructed book full of poetic quirks . . . Her characters are personifications of Montreal and a dark mirror of celebrity culture
Irish News
Heather O'Neill does it again! The Girl Who Was Saturday Night is full of quaking love and true sadness, family rackets, heart attacks, feral cats of all sorts, risky trysts, and reeling abandon. O'Neill's voice is singular, brave, magical, and bursting with stark beauty
Lisa Moore
No one's depiction of the shady side of life is as luminous - or as heart-wrenching - as Heather O'Neill's
Nancy Huston
Delightfully bizarre . . . what really shines here is O'Neill's writing. The author stuns with the vivid descriptions and metaphors that are studded throughout . . . A coming-of-age story with a working-class, reality TV twist
Kirkus