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Bottle Rocket Hearts
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 parents' 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. On the night of the 1995 referendum, politics and romance come to a head and Eve's naiveté begins to fade. From naive teenager to hotshot rough girl, Eve decides her own fate.
189 pages, Paperback
First published April 14, 2007
9 people are currently reading
2178 people want to read
About the author
Zoe Whittall
19 books684 followers Zoe Whittall's latest novel, The Best Kind of People, spent 26 consecutive weeks on the Globe bestseller list, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, was Indigo Best Book of the Year, Heather's Pick, Globe and Mail Best Book, Toronto Life Best Book of 2016, Walrus Magazine Best Book of 2016 . The film/TV rights have been optioned by Sarah Polley who will write and direct. She has two previous novels and three collections of poetry, and has written for the televisions shows Degrassi, Schitt's Creek, and The Baroness Von Sketch Show. She won the KM Hunter award for literature, and a Lamda Literary award for her second novel, Holding Still for as Long as Possible. Her debut, Bottle Rocket Hearts, was named one of the top ten novels of the decade by CBC Canada Reads, and one of the Best Books of 2007 by The Globe and Mail and Quill & Quire magazine. She has published three books of poetry, Precordial Thump, (exile, 08) The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life (McGilligan Books, 01) and The Emily Valentine Poems (Snare Books, 06.) The Globe and Mail called her "the cockiest, brashest, funniest, toughest, most life-affirming, elegant, scruffy, no-holds-barred writer to emerge from Montreal since Mordecai Richler…”. She was born in South Durham, Quebec, resided in Montreal during the early 1990s and has lived in Toronto since 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 124 reviews
April 13, 2010
i wish i would have liked this better than i did. it covers topical ground that interests me a lot. the main protagonist is eve, a 19-year-old queer girl from the suburbs of montreal. she gets involved in the city's queer scene & starts dating a somewhat older woman. they are pursuing a non-monogamous relationship & eve is struggling to master her jealousy over her girlfriend hooking up with her glamorous, sophisticated ex on the side. she begins to realize that perhaps part of her jealousy is actually attraction to the ex--the first femme-y girl that femme-y eve has ever been interested in. & then...that aspect of the story pretty much peters out. eve's girlfriend seems to commit herself to monogamy (& eve is thrilled about it, playing into the common dynamic of people gritting their teeth & sticking out a period of non-monogamy until their partner decides to "settle down") & the ex is scarcely in the story anymore, except as an occasional adviser to eve. at least until one night when the girlfriend says she needs to be alone to feel sad about her dead mother, & eve discovers that girlfriend & ex are actually doing the deed. eve dumps her girlfriend & spends the next several months trying to pull herself together & get over it.
eve moves into a little punk house in montreal with some queer roomies: seven is an HIV-positive dude who parties a lot, does a lot of drugs, & seems to have a never-ending stream of hook-ups. he even decides to lay waste to his short-term memory in an experiment involving serious drug abuse & more sex. that is pretty much the extent of his characterization, which unfortunately made it difficult for me to care about him much. rachel is a grad student working on a feminist-tinged dissertation. she doesn't date much because she's busy with her schoolwork. eve seems to see her as kind of a role model for how she might like to be when she's older, because rachel seems really grounded & domestic in certain ways. rachel & seven are astoundingly patient with eve as she works to get over her girlfriend. rachel tells her repeatedly that the girlfriend isn't good enough for eve & that there are better fish in the sea. this part of the story drags & drags & drags a little bit more, without the reader really learning much about the characters or having any reason to get invested in them. also, the book is set in the early 90s & there's a sub-plot involving quebecois liberation.
& then rachel is gay bashed while she's out on a rare date, walking home alone from a dance night. she dies. seven (who has been rachel's best friend since childhood) & eve are crushed. the murder is huge news in montreal. eve & seven attend the funeral & eve yells at rachel's family for not supporting her more when she was alive. rachel's relationship with her parents had been on the chilly side of cordial because they had a hard time accepting the fact that their daughter was queer. eve doesn't understand why seven defends the family because she's 20 years old & has never experienced the death of anyone close to her before. funerals are generally not the best place for spouting political invective at fellow mourners.
seven dedicates himself to writing a "play" (that is really more of a performance piece) about his friendship with rachel & the circumstances around her death, & all the friends he has lost to AIDS over the years. it seems to be well-received by the queer community, but once again, this plotline is so skimpy on concrete details & emotional resonance, it was hard to get invested.
shortly before xmas, eve's former girlfriend spends the night with a woman whose apartment burns down in a fire during the night. the woman has no idea where the girlfriend is. everyone is worried that she died in the fire. turns out, she left in the night & was wandering the streets & turns up in a mental institution. seven & eve rush there to make sure she's okay. & then the girlfriend's supposedly dead mother turns up, alive & well. this reveal would have been so much more powerful is the girlfriend's fiction about her dead mother had been a more prevalent part of the plot. we know that the dead mother lie was instrumental in eve catching the girlfriend banging her ex, but...i was just kind of like, "okay, the girlfriend is a pathological liar. it was pretty obvious she wasn't playing with a full deck right from the get-go." eve walks out of the hospital with her head held high, finally able to relinquish her attachment to her ex-girlfriend now that she knows that she's a big fat liar. &...scene.
the failings of the book were that there was practically no plot to speak of. girl falls for girl who is a manipulative liar. they split up. girl moves into happy shiny punk house. roommate gets murdered. girl discovers ex-girlfriend is a liar. there's a way to make this scanty plot work, but it hinges on making the reader care about the characters. unfortunately, the characters were all remarkably unfaceted & i just couldn't care about them or their relationships with each other. i wanted eve to split with her girlfriend as soon as their relationship was introduced, so watching even take over 150 pages to get there just felt wearisome. in tandem with the flat characters & plotlessness, a vicious homophobic murder felt jarring & somewhat sensationalistic. eve's response to the murder only made me like her less.
& to top it off, half the book is pieced together from vague, "poetic" sentence fragments. this is just a matter of taste, some people are into that dreamy impressionistic thing, but it's not to my taste at all. it was like reading tedious adolescent poetry--which i guess makes sense, in that eve was basically an adolescent, but...still. & i felt bad for the folks who were thanked for their copyediting in the acknowledgments. there were so many embarrassing weird spelling/homonym errors. like "peddling" instead of "pedaling". or "manicly" instead of "manically". perhaps this is a minor quibble, but it was so egregious & distracting. it made the book seem kind of amateur. i want these books, about punk queers living their lives, to be well-edited & of high quality. i want to care about the characters & their relationships with each other. i want to lose myself in their world without getting distracted by shoddy copyediting. & what the eff is up with that boobalicious faceless girl cover? can't say it really has anything to do with the book. eve was cute & femme-y & into her femininity, but in a book that is ostensibly about humanizing the lives of marginalized young queers, maybe we can have a cover that shows the girl's face, yeah?
eve moves into a little punk house in montreal with some queer roomies: seven is an HIV-positive dude who parties a lot, does a lot of drugs, & seems to have a never-ending stream of hook-ups. he even decides to lay waste to his short-term memory in an experiment involving serious drug abuse & more sex. that is pretty much the extent of his characterization, which unfortunately made it difficult for me to care about him much. rachel is a grad student working on a feminist-tinged dissertation. she doesn't date much because she's busy with her schoolwork. eve seems to see her as kind of a role model for how she might like to be when she's older, because rachel seems really grounded & domestic in certain ways. rachel & seven are astoundingly patient with eve as she works to get over her girlfriend. rachel tells her repeatedly that the girlfriend isn't good enough for eve & that there are better fish in the sea. this part of the story drags & drags & drags a little bit more, without the reader really learning much about the characters or having any reason to get invested in them. also, the book is set in the early 90s & there's a sub-plot involving quebecois liberation.
& then rachel is gay bashed while she's out on a rare date, walking home alone from a dance night. she dies. seven (who has been rachel's best friend since childhood) & eve are crushed. the murder is huge news in montreal. eve & seven attend the funeral & eve yells at rachel's family for not supporting her more when she was alive. rachel's relationship with her parents had been on the chilly side of cordial because they had a hard time accepting the fact that their daughter was queer. eve doesn't understand why seven defends the family because she's 20 years old & has never experienced the death of anyone close to her before. funerals are generally not the best place for spouting political invective at fellow mourners.
seven dedicates himself to writing a "play" (that is really more of a performance piece) about his friendship with rachel & the circumstances around her death, & all the friends he has lost to AIDS over the years. it seems to be well-received by the queer community, but once again, this plotline is so skimpy on concrete details & emotional resonance, it was hard to get invested.
shortly before xmas, eve's former girlfriend spends the night with a woman whose apartment burns down in a fire during the night. the woman has no idea where the girlfriend is. everyone is worried that she died in the fire. turns out, she left in the night & was wandering the streets & turns up in a mental institution. seven & eve rush there to make sure she's okay. & then the girlfriend's supposedly dead mother turns up, alive & well. this reveal would have been so much more powerful is the girlfriend's fiction about her dead mother had been a more prevalent part of the plot. we know that the dead mother lie was instrumental in eve catching the girlfriend banging her ex, but...i was just kind of like, "okay, the girlfriend is a pathological liar. it was pretty obvious she wasn't playing with a full deck right from the get-go." eve walks out of the hospital with her head held high, finally able to relinquish her attachment to her ex-girlfriend now that she knows that she's a big fat liar. &...scene.
the failings of the book were that there was practically no plot to speak of. girl falls for girl who is a manipulative liar. they split up. girl moves into happy shiny punk house. roommate gets murdered. girl discovers ex-girlfriend is a liar. there's a way to make this scanty plot work, but it hinges on making the reader care about the characters. unfortunately, the characters were all remarkably unfaceted & i just couldn't care about them or their relationships with each other. i wanted eve to split with her girlfriend as soon as their relationship was introduced, so watching even take over 150 pages to get there just felt wearisome. in tandem with the flat characters & plotlessness, a vicious homophobic murder felt jarring & somewhat sensationalistic. eve's response to the murder only made me like her less.
& to top it off, half the book is pieced together from vague, "poetic" sentence fragments. this is just a matter of taste, some people are into that dreamy impressionistic thing, but it's not to my taste at all. it was like reading tedious adolescent poetry--which i guess makes sense, in that eve was basically an adolescent, but...still. & i felt bad for the folks who were thanked for their copyediting in the acknowledgments. there were so many embarrassing weird spelling/homonym errors. like "peddling" instead of "pedaling". or "manicly" instead of "manically". perhaps this is a minor quibble, but it was so egregious & distracting. it made the book seem kind of amateur. i want these books, about punk queers living their lives, to be well-edited & of high quality. i want to care about the characters & their relationships with each other. i want to lose myself in their world without getting distracted by shoddy copyediting. & what the eff is up with that boobalicious faceless girl cover? can't say it really has anything to do with the book. eve was cute & femme-y & into her femininity, but in a book that is ostensibly about humanizing the lives of marginalized young queers, maybe we can have a cover that shows the girl's face, yeah?
January 16, 2019
I think I might not have liked this as much as I did if it wasn't for the time and place of 1990s Canada. I loved the nostalgic vibe this book gave me (despite not being Canadian, and being around 5/6 years old at the time this was set). The setting was vibrant, fun, dating. And I liked the character of Eve - she seemed very real to me, with relatable neuroses and a sweet charm. Even when she was being distant from people who loved her, I kind of understood why. The book takes a while to build some semblance of a plot, but I was enjoying the world I was in too much to really mind that it was more of a character study than anything else. And there are some serious issues discussed here, with some truly shocking and sad moments. I'm glad I went out on a whim and picked this up, it was an entertaining read and something a bit different for me.
March 20, 2025
I really liked this book and I think that’s because I read it at the right time, when I’m living in Montreal and prioritizing relationships of all kinds, putting more care and energy into my friends, and already contemplating a tattoo that says “that’s Mr. Dyke to you!”
March 1, 2013
I was nine in 1995. I lived west of Montreal and the city seemed like this big, far-off place my dad could magically navigate. I had no real concept of separatism (except that I would have voted a big NO and I knew my parents were worried), or homophobia, or alternative culture.
I am twenty-six now, and Montreal's become home. Reading Bottle Rocket Hearts was familiar; those throwaway mentions of places like Santropol or Foufs stir up my own experiences. I know this city, most of the time; love it, usually -- but I sometimes feel alienated from it. So, in a lot of ways, I related pretty fiercely to Eve: a West Island girl questioning her sexuality and her place in alt-culture, friends with people who (and living in a city that) seemed so much cooler and more interesting than she was. Whittall has created a believable, genuine protagonist, and brought the 1990s zeitgeist with her (well, like, as far as I know -- like I said, I was nine when most of the events in this book happened). I love and am fully impressed by that ability to reach across a generation and strike the familiar Montréal! chord.
So I can't review this book objectively, because I relate way too strongly to the material and the city. I don't think it's an exceptional example of a queer bildungsroman -- it reads fairly formulaic, with some pretty stock secondary characters. The writing is, at times, quite beautiful -- Whittall is also apparently a poet, and I'll definitely be giving her poetry a shot -- but I can't say I would have been as emotionally jolted as I was had I not known or hoped to know the city, the context, the experiences (well, some of them).
That said -- what an emotional jolt. A call to action, in a lot of ways. Books don't have to be perfect to be provocative, meaningful, intensely important -- and this one was all of those things, for me.
I am twenty-six now, and Montreal's become home. Reading Bottle Rocket Hearts was familiar; those throwaway mentions of places like Santropol or Foufs stir up my own experiences. I know this city, most of the time; love it, usually -- but I sometimes feel alienated from it. So, in a lot of ways, I related pretty fiercely to Eve: a West Island girl questioning her sexuality and her place in alt-culture, friends with people who (and living in a city that) seemed so much cooler and more interesting than she was. Whittall has created a believable, genuine protagonist, and brought the 1990s zeitgeist with her (well, like, as far as I know -- like I said, I was nine when most of the events in this book happened). I love and am fully impressed by that ability to reach across a generation and strike the familiar Montréal! chord.
So I can't review this book objectively, because I relate way too strongly to the material and the city. I don't think it's an exceptional example of a queer bildungsroman -- it reads fairly formulaic, with some pretty stock secondary characters. The writing is, at times, quite beautiful -- Whittall is also apparently a poet, and I'll definitely be giving her poetry a shot -- but I can't say I would have been as emotionally jolted as I was had I not known or hoped to know the city, the context, the experiences (well, some of them).
That said -- what an emotional jolt. A call to action, in a lot of ways. Books don't have to be perfect to be provocative, meaningful, intensely important -- and this one was all of those things, for me.
June 27, 2012
Eve, the spunky 19-year-old protagonist of Zoe Whittall’s debut novel Bottle Rocket Hearts (2007), is a 90s rebel girl, screaming along with Kathleen Hanna as she rides her bike down Montreal’s Ste Catherines street in her silver spray-painted doc martens. Not despite, but because of her irreverent, dead-pan comments such as “I don’t have bad self-esteem, I’m realistic,” Eve is instantly a likable character who makes you root for her throughout Bottle Rocket Hearts; as the writer over at The CanLit Thing remarks: “Whittall has the incredible knack for writing characters I want to be friends with.” As a reader you hope it won’t be Eve’s heart that is exploded/exploited by older, less naïve women’s callousness, but given Eve’s whole-hearted jump into big city lesbian love, an intact heart seems like too much to ask for. Maybe things are better with scars anyway....
see the rest of my review here: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wor...
see the rest of my review here: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wor...
November 23, 2014
I have decided I love reading books set in Montreal. In the '90s. In the newly discovered queer community by a privileged young anglo who is shedding her skin of modest upbringing and buried political ideals. Della is everyone's worst ex-boyfriend. The one who left you at a Pixie's concert with a massive hash high and the empty promise of forever. Eve is one of the few characters in fiction I have felt embarrassed along with, my own hindsight stored away in "well shit" vaults of growing up. She navigates the long, torturous relationships of the people she loves and pines for. She begins to take liberties, inspired by those desires and the people she meets, almost accidentally, along the way. Though this almost novella flings the plot at you three quarters of the way through, the shift in Eve's story and her motives is warmly welcomed, and easily embraced. This is the most "contemporary" book I've read for Hello, Hemlock! And it has been one of my favourites.
February 28, 2018
An interesting coming-of-age story in which Eve experiences first love and first death and survives to become herself. I feel like she was searching for herself, for her adulthood throughout the novel. She found it at the end and was able to charge forward and live life on her own terms.
Montreal in the 1990s served as the backdrop to the narrative and sometimes felt like it was a another character. Historical references, including the Sex Garage Raid and the Quebec Referendum, were incorporated into the story in a way that provided authenticity to the narrative and growth to the characters. While not all of the 1990s references resonated with me, that might be due to some/many of them being Montreal-centric.
This was a quick read at 189 pages and I think best enjoyed in one or two sittings. By the last chapter, I wanted to just get on with it because I really couldn't see where it was all going. But the ending satisfied.
Montreal in the 1990s served as the backdrop to the narrative and sometimes felt like it was a another character. Historical references, including the Sex Garage Raid and the Quebec Referendum, were incorporated into the story in a way that provided authenticity to the narrative and growth to the characters. While not all of the 1990s references resonated with me, that might be due to some/many of them being Montreal-centric.
This was a quick read at 189 pages and I think best enjoyed in one or two sittings. By the last chapter, I wanted to just get on with it because I really couldn't see where it was all going. But the ending satisfied.
March 2, 2020
Loved this book. Loved the Canadianness, the youthful romance, the well observed, detailed nostalgia of it all for me. And, most especially, I love Whittall's poetic emotional language. So often in here there's turns of phrase that ditch logic for an emotional resonance that startled me. When the book leaned towards the dark in the second half I caught myself wanting it to stay with the feel-good romantic story but I nonetheless came out a big fan. Really looking forward to reading more from her.
June 2, 2016
This is really good, but I just don't think I can read books about toxic relationships & self destructive tendencies anymore. I like the women's studies/SJ politics angle--it felt very true to my experiences. The parts that I didn't like were just that they were done so well. They hit too close to home.
June 21, 2021
So many fun parts of this book, but so much unnecessary ableism... who was still using the r word in 2009?
July 16, 2012
3.5 -- I quite liked this book. Whittall's prose is really lovely, and even though this is a story that has been told many times before, Eve's perspective of being a lesbian in Quebec during the 90's feels fresh and new. It's a story of girl meets girl, girl wanting to be with girl, girl who girl is n love with is a pathological liar, girl finally escapes and knows it's the right decision. It's a good story and the writing keeps the story fast paced and interesting.
However, Della. Oh my goodness, did I hate that girl and for the life of me I couldn't figure out the appeal of her as a person. All I wanted to do was smack Eve every time to thought Della was a good person, and I kept screaming "you can do better, honey!" So their relationship has some very frustrating aspects that while they kept the story going, I spent a lot of time just cursing at it.
I'm definitely going to check out her second book when I have time, as at the end of the day, I was completely invested in the setting and its characters. I can also see why this book in on the Canada "Must Reads" list as well. Recommend!
However, Della. Oh my goodness, did I hate that girl and for the life of me I couldn't figure out the appeal of her as a person. All I wanted to do was smack Eve every time to thought Della was a good person, and I kept screaming "you can do better, honey!" So their relationship has some very frustrating aspects that while they kept the story going, I spent a lot of time just cursing at it.
I'm definitely going to check out her second book when I have time, as at the end of the day, I was completely invested in the setting and its characters. I can also see why this book in on the Canada "Must Reads" list as well. Recommend!
November 21, 2010
Wow. I really love this book. It deserves to be on the Canada Reads Top Book of the Decade shortlist.
April 16, 2011
Baby Femme coming of age in Montreal. Sloppy polaymory. The compulsive liar we've all been in love with. Apathetic natural food store shop girl. So much to love about this book. Pick it up.
October 24, 2010
I've been wanting to read this book since it came out, so when I joined the CanLit challenge this year it was good motivation to finally start reading. This is one of those times where I'm going to fall back on the publisher's blurb, because I've tried to summarise the book myself and failed miserably. This works much better:
In the year before the 1995 Referendum in Quebec, Eve wants nothing more than to move out of the bedroom community of Dorval and into the real city, Montreal, where she hopes to meet a girl who'll want to kiss her back. She finds Della, moves out from under her parents' roof and into a world of Indie rock, tattoos, piercings, roommates, and feminist politics. Over the course of the following two years, she discovers that real life can't be lived following the expectations placed on her by her lover or her friends.
If I had read this book never having lived in Canada or known much about its recent history, I would probably have had a hard time following the political side of the story. Not a lot of context is provided, so I'll quickly explain: in 1995 there was a second referendum on the question of whether Quebec should separate from Canada (I actually thought this was the first one, until I looked it up just now - the first one was in 1980). The "No" side narrowly won, and the debate has been more or less shelved since then. It was without a doubt a heady time in Quebec, and perhaps in the country in general, and the atmosphere comes across strongly in Bottle Rocket Hearts. Whittall succeeded enormously in capturing that uni-student life (one which, in a way, felt familiar), that life of young sexually adventurous rebels against the state. It has a 1980s Thatcher's-Britain flavour to it, of punk music and youth rebelling against conservatism.
The story is narrated by Eve, who is young - younger than she says she is - earnestly gay and somewhat easily influenced by older, more experienced gay friends, including her girlfriend Della and her flatmates Rachel and Seven. The story is one of growth - in Eve, and perhaps at a slower rate in the province itself. She narrates in present tense and moves fluidly back and forth in time, to the extent that my mental chronology of the story got all messed up. I wonder if writing it more chronologically would have been just as effective, and saved me from a headache in trying to guess where I was in Eve's story. Some scenes were in past tense but it was never a consistent pattern. A minor quibble, perhaps, but it did make me slow in reading what is a short novel.
But I did like Eve's voice, which rings strong and true. Her concise use of words, the pretty metaphor inserted here and there that shows how clearly Eve sees beauty in the gritty, makeshift world she lives in, creates a rich setting.
* by "English mother" she means English-speaking Canadian.
There's something decidedly young and naive about Eve, and yet worn and tired at the same time - she puts so much energy into everything, and watches others so closely, and wants to belong to the gay and lesbian community so much. Earnest, she comes across as at times. Other times, I felt protective of her, of the way she was being played around with by Della, of her vulnerability.
Of the other characters, Seven was the most charismatic and the most honest in his dealings with Eve - by which I mean he was a genuine friend. There's a tapestry of other characters who flit in and out of Eve's life in Montreal, and the occasional appearance of a dowdy parent figure. There's tragedy and comedy in equal portions, and watching Eve come into her own strength at the end created a satisfying climax. Even the messy narrative - the jumping around in time and place and even tense - only adds to the sense of Eve's messy life.
If I were Canadian, I could probably make some remark about the novel being intrinsic to Canadian sense of identity, or the LGBT community, or hazard that Eve is a metaphor for the maturation of the province - but I have no idea, it's only a glimmer in my immigrant perception that this may be the case, so I've confined my thoughts to the story itself as much as possible.
I learnt from Whittall's blog that the book is being adapted to the screen - or, rather, she is working on the screenplay. It will work perfectly in that format, as a grungy arthouse film, and I hope it appears at TIFF in a couple of years.
In the year before the 1995 Referendum in Quebec, Eve wants nothing more than to move out of the bedroom community of Dorval and into the real city, Montreal, where she hopes to meet a girl who'll want to kiss her back. She finds Della, moves out from under her parents' roof and into a world of Indie rock, tattoos, piercings, roommates, and feminist politics. Over the course of the following two years, she discovers that real life can't be lived following the expectations placed on her by her lover or her friends.
If I had read this book never having lived in Canada or known much about its recent history, I would probably have had a hard time following the political side of the story. Not a lot of context is provided, so I'll quickly explain: in 1995 there was a second referendum on the question of whether Quebec should separate from Canada (I actually thought this was the first one, until I looked it up just now - the first one was in 1980). The "No" side narrowly won, and the debate has been more or less shelved since then. It was without a doubt a heady time in Quebec, and perhaps in the country in general, and the atmosphere comes across strongly in Bottle Rocket Hearts. Whittall succeeded enormously in capturing that uni-student life (one which, in a way, felt familiar), that life of young sexually adventurous rebels against the state. It has a 1980s Thatcher's-Britain flavour to it, of punk music and youth rebelling against conservatism.
The story is narrated by Eve, who is young - younger than she says she is - earnestly gay and somewhat easily influenced by older, more experienced gay friends, including her girlfriend Della and her flatmates Rachel and Seven. The story is one of growth - in Eve, and perhaps at a slower rate in the province itself. She narrates in present tense and moves fluidly back and forth in time, to the extent that my mental chronology of the story got all messed up. I wonder if writing it more chronologically would have been just as effective, and saved me from a headache in trying to guess where I was in Eve's story. Some scenes were in past tense but it was never a consistent pattern. A minor quibble, perhaps, but it did make me slow in reading what is a short novel.
But I did like Eve's voice, which rings strong and true. Her concise use of words, the pretty metaphor inserted here and there that shows how clearly Eve sees beauty in the gritty, makeshift world she lives in, creates a rich setting.
Della was raised in a small town near Quebec City by a French father and an English mother*. Her mother insisted on putting her on a two hour bus ride every day to get to an English school so she'd have a "hope in hell" of getting out of said town. She showed me photos of her and her brother holding hands on a country dirt road smiling on their first day of school. They are little dots in a field with no signs of other human life, no houses, just trees and hay.
Her father disagreed but was never one to fight. Only after her mother's death did her father take up separatism like a religious zealot. Della went along for the ride, despite her eventual Concordia arts degree, her fluency in English, her place in both communities. Della never seems to say much about her mother at all. I didn't press. Della had stories she was comfortable telling, and I'd hear them told again and again at parties, and I'd feel slightly smug that I already knew the endings, the punch lines. She told them with a similar inflection each time. She spun a beautiful sparkling string of yarn. (pp. 55-6)
* by "English mother" she means English-speaking Canadian.
There's something decidedly young and naive about Eve, and yet worn and tired at the same time - she puts so much energy into everything, and watches others so closely, and wants to belong to the gay and lesbian community so much. Earnest, she comes across as at times. Other times, I felt protective of her, of the way she was being played around with by Della, of her vulnerability.
I, on the other hand, haven't had the requisite rebound love affair. It's been three months of solo sleeps and erotic malaise. Jenny is busy with her boyfriend. Della's friends weren't my friends. Rachel is married to her books and thesis. Melanie takes me out for drinks sometimes. And there are the girls from the women's centre I go to actions with. But I guess if I'm going to concentrate on friends I should try to make some more or connect more intensely with the ones I have. I feel lonely for the first time in my life. (p. 102)
Of the other characters, Seven was the most charismatic and the most honest in his dealings with Eve - by which I mean he was a genuine friend. There's a tapestry of other characters who flit in and out of Eve's life in Montreal, and the occasional appearance of a dowdy parent figure. There's tragedy and comedy in equal portions, and watching Eve come into her own strength at the end created a satisfying climax. Even the messy narrative - the jumping around in time and place and even tense - only adds to the sense of Eve's messy life.
If I were Canadian, I could probably make some remark about the novel being intrinsic to Canadian sense of identity, or the LGBT community, or hazard that Eve is a metaphor for the maturation of the province - but I have no idea, it's only a glimmer in my immigrant perception that this may be the case, so I've confined my thoughts to the story itself as much as possible.
I learnt from Whittall's blog that the book is being adapted to the screen - or, rather, she is working on the screenplay. It will work perfectly in that format, as a grungy arthouse film, and I hope it appears at TIFF in a couple of years.
January 28, 2021
Déchirant, palpitant de vérités, plein de vie. La réalité qui nous frappe de plein fouet.
December 7, 2023
Had to read it for school but it was an amazing experience. Reminded me a bit of the Bell Jar but more modern.
October 3, 2024
Just adored this book. Raw and beautiful. I think it really captures the insanity of first love so well.
October 21, 2024
the plateau is the protagonist
March 26, 2023
i was much too caught up in the cool setting (temporal and spatial) for the first half of the book. got halfway through and realised it was bad! the writing is not good (tense changing constantly and horrible metaphors everywhere) and the ending is actually comically terrible. i really wanted to like this! but it was just so poorly written! i’m so sorry!
October 12, 2024
i read this a few months ago, it was exactly the kind of book i was looking for and my search within the lesbian litterature of my local library was quite deceiptful after hitting that jackpot. sometimes when i bike at night in mtl streets i think of the main character
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2011
Zoe Whittall’s first novel is a simple story. Girl meets girl. Girl loses girl. Girl wins girl back again. Girl realizes aforementioned girl was no good for her in the first place. Girl leaves girl, once and for all.
Essentially, Bottle Rocket Hearts is a coming of age story set in Montreal in the mid-nineties, complicated by the sexuality of its protagonist. Eve’s in love for the first time with the wrong girl and she gets her heart broken. After a brief, precarious rapprochement, she patches it up again and moves on, "soft and furious."
There’s a lot of clubbing, drinking, some drugs, some more drugs, a little more clubbing. The plot itself is not overly compelling. Told from the first person, in a more than convincing late adolescent voice, the story of Eve’s heartbreak can sometimes be a little claustrophobic, like watching someone pick at a scab.
The narrative does, however, scratch the surface of several deeper issues, such as senseless violence against women/homosexuals, or the ravage of AIDS amongst the queer community. There’s a brief comparison of Quebec’s search for identity with Eve’s own personal quest. But these threads run close to the surface. Ultimately, they are the backdrop to failed love.
Whittall's talent is most evident in the minutiae – thumbnail sketches of iridescent detail, like photographs taken in harsh light. Her writing has teeth. It bites. Hard. Upon finding her girlfriend in bed with someone else, Eve feels "a quick incision between her seventh and eighth ribs ... then several quick kisses with a staple gun to [her] gum-line...a sock in the teeth for good measure."
On another occasion Eve stops by a strip-club for the first time to meet a friend. Once inside, she feels "like a raggedy kindergarten teacher with finger paint on her face. Totally asexual. Like a houseplant."
There is also a brief funeral scene which, more than any other episode in the novel, captures what it means to be young and gay and struggling for identity. "There is a rift between family and friends in the church, a weirdness that comes when your closest family has no idea who your closest friends are. Two camps that loved the same person separately, like there were two funerals happening at once."
The author’s insight and acuity in these situations bode well for the future. Bottle Rocket Hearts is an intriguing debut.
Essentially, Bottle Rocket Hearts is a coming of age story set in Montreal in the mid-nineties, complicated by the sexuality of its protagonist. Eve’s in love for the first time with the wrong girl and she gets her heart broken. After a brief, precarious rapprochement, she patches it up again and moves on, "soft and furious."
There’s a lot of clubbing, drinking, some drugs, some more drugs, a little more clubbing. The plot itself is not overly compelling. Told from the first person, in a more than convincing late adolescent voice, the story of Eve’s heartbreak can sometimes be a little claustrophobic, like watching someone pick at a scab.
The narrative does, however, scratch the surface of several deeper issues, such as senseless violence against women/homosexuals, or the ravage of AIDS amongst the queer community. There’s a brief comparison of Quebec’s search for identity with Eve’s own personal quest. But these threads run close to the surface. Ultimately, they are the backdrop to failed love.
Whittall's talent is most evident in the minutiae – thumbnail sketches of iridescent detail, like photographs taken in harsh light. Her writing has teeth. It bites. Hard. Upon finding her girlfriend in bed with someone else, Eve feels "a quick incision between her seventh and eighth ribs ... then several quick kisses with a staple gun to [her] gum-line...a sock in the teeth for good measure."
On another occasion Eve stops by a strip-club for the first time to meet a friend. Once inside, she feels "like a raggedy kindergarten teacher with finger paint on her face. Totally asexual. Like a houseplant."
There is also a brief funeral scene which, more than any other episode in the novel, captures what it means to be young and gay and struggling for identity. "There is a rift between family and friends in the church, a weirdness that comes when your closest family has no idea who your closest friends are. Two camps that loved the same person separately, like there were two funerals happening at once."
The author’s insight and acuity in these situations bode well for the future. Bottle Rocket Hearts is an intriguing debut.
May 17, 2016
Edit 5/17/2016: This has a lot more casual ableism in it than I had remembered! Also some on-page sexual harassment/assault and off-page gay-bashing, so be warned for that. Rereading this also highlighted for me how it really came to me at the exact right moment: when I was 23 and heartbroken and on the verge of moving to Montreal. It consequently lost some of its magic for me on reread, but I do still love it.
Original review (5/4/2014):
I recently read Holding Still for as Long as Possible and didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to, so I didn't have the highest of hopes for this book. As it turned out, I really loved it. Baby femme in mid-90s Montreal falls in love with a liar, tries to reconcile "a political belief in polyamory" with her own feelings of intense and ugly jealousy, makes friends, loses friends, and walks the line between multiple worlds as she tries to figure out what home is.
What I enjoyed most, I think, is that nothing in this novel gets flattened or simplified. Most of the characters are radical (white) queers, but they're not a homogeneous group and the author really shows that political ideals don't always translate easily to personal relationships; the 1995 referendum comes and goes with some characters voting yes, some voting no, and both the sympathetic and less-sympathetic (e.g., racist) sides of the sovereigntist movement showcased; and gender and sexual identities are complex, with Eve finally choosing "femme" over other words that have never fit her quite right (queer, lesbian, bi) and both struggling against invisibility as a queer woman and recognizing a certain degree of advantage or privilege she has in that invisibility, the legitimacy she is granted by straight people (and mainstream gays) over people like her butch girlfriend, who has a more complicated relationship with gender.
Not a perfect novel, and not a showy one, but I liked it a lot. I love coming-of-age stories and this was a really enjoyable one.
Original review (5/4/2014):
I recently read Holding Still for as Long as Possible and didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to, so I didn't have the highest of hopes for this book. As it turned out, I really loved it. Baby femme in mid-90s Montreal falls in love with a liar, tries to reconcile "a political belief in polyamory" with her own feelings of intense and ugly jealousy, makes friends, loses friends, and walks the line between multiple worlds as she tries to figure out what home is.
What I enjoyed most, I think, is that nothing in this novel gets flattened or simplified. Most of the characters are radical (white) queers, but they're not a homogeneous group and the author really shows that political ideals don't always translate easily to personal relationships; the 1995 referendum comes and goes with some characters voting yes, some voting no, and both the sympathetic and less-sympathetic (e.g., racist) sides of the sovereigntist movement showcased; and gender and sexual identities are complex, with Eve finally choosing "femme" over other words that have never fit her quite right (queer, lesbian, bi) and both struggling against invisibility as a queer woman and recognizing a certain degree of advantage or privilege she has in that invisibility, the legitimacy she is granted by straight people (and mainstream gays) over people like her butch girlfriend, who has a more complicated relationship with gender.
Not a perfect novel, and not a showy one, but I liked it a lot. I love coming-of-age stories and this was a really enjoyable one.
August 24, 2016
Strangely uncompelling. Good concept - a lesbian coming-of-age novel set in the era of the Quebec referendum - with clever writing, and yet unconvincing, with characters that just don't grab my interest. Might have been better written as erotica, as anytime the main characters get anywhere near a clinch, something dramatic happens to interrupt them. Like a bomb going off. LITERALLY.
Other encounters are only hinted at in retrospect, and unfortunately, the main character's love interest just isn't that interesting a character without an explanation of what exactly - love or lust - drew them together.
The characters, generally, seem to just be walking caricatures of gay stereotypes - they tick off all the boxes, but have no depth. Events are listed more than they are described, and as a reader, it doesn't feel like this is a lived experience, more like a catalog.
In summary, it's that "disastrous first lesbian relationship" novel, with a lot of heavy-handed foreshadowing, so that's not a spoiler, in my opinion. And, if one disregards the profanity, it's more of a YA novel than it should be.
Other encounters are only hinted at in retrospect, and unfortunately, the main character's love interest just isn't that interesting a character without an explanation of what exactly - love or lust - drew them together.
The characters, generally, seem to just be walking caricatures of gay stereotypes - they tick off all the boxes, but have no depth. Events are listed more than they are described, and as a reader, it doesn't feel like this is a lived experience, more like a catalog.
In summary, it's that "disastrous first lesbian relationship" novel, with a lot of heavy-handed foreshadowing, so that's not a spoiler, in my opinion. And, if one disregards the profanity, it's more of a YA novel than it should be.
August 27, 2025
I really enjoyed this novel, more so than her debut short fiction collection. Whittall clearly excels when she has more time to develop her characters. Not necessarily the point but it's a crazy accurate depiction of what it's like doing random feminist bullshit in undergrad lol
April 16, 2010
i drank this book in one huge gulp, because i am hungry for some portrayal of the life i've known as a queer girl weirdo. it was nice reading about peeps who blast team dresch on their walkmans during tense moments--JUST LIKE ME! GASP!--but ultimately i was left kind of unsatisfied. i really wanted to care about the characters, and i didn't. i really wanted to see what was so great about della, the main character's girlfriend, and also what was so awful about her. i got neither.
mainly the whole thing was a little confusing, but still an enjoyable read. zoe whittall can turn a beautiful phrase, really sum things up in a lovely way. plus, i've been longing for canada lately, & this sated my desire somewhat.
i wish the publishing house had done a better job with the typos, & hadn't put a giant picture of tits on the front cover. like, is that the only thing that's supposed to sell the book? it made me sad.
oh, & the chapter titles were really really good.
mainly the whole thing was a little confusing, but still an enjoyable read. zoe whittall can turn a beautiful phrase, really sum things up in a lovely way. plus, i've been longing for canada lately, & this sated my desire somewhat.
i wish the publishing house had done a better job with the typos, & hadn't put a giant picture of tits on the front cover. like, is that the only thing that's supposed to sell the book? it made me sad.
oh, & the chapter titles were really really good.
February 16, 2009
I would of given this book less stars if there hadn't have been an interesting twist in the end. I had a hard time liking this book because I felt it was all about painting cliche portraits of queer feminist radicals. I didn't feel any of the characters did anything in the book that was straying from this caricature, therefore it felt really unrealistic and trite. This might be an interesting book for someone who has never been involved in the queer/feminist/radical activist scene, but for someone who has been involved it reads as a pretencious riot grrrl 101 story. However, I did learn some interesting things about Quebec's recent history, so I did like the historical context.
January 28, 2011
I read this right after The Bone Cage, and found one parallel: this bucks Can lit territory and offers a very different feminine voice than I'm used to from Canadian female authors: it's franker, rougher, more direct, and a bit more masculine if that's not getting too stereotypical. I liked it and could have seen reading it (even dancing to it) with punk rock music and a whiskey at hand (sadly, neither music nor drink was available). It reminded me of the terrible insecurity of entering adulthood, along with the adrenalin from the rush of being able to be whomever and do whatever I wanted, even though this often came with crappy consequences.
March 1, 2016
Let me start this review by stating that I am a huge Heather O'Neill fan, and to anyone who has read this and even slightly enjoyed it, you need to read O'Neill's books.
This book offers all the promise of a good author. But it did screen "debut". It'll be interesting to read more recent works by Zoe Whittall.
Set in the backdrop of Montreal, with all the seediness of the gay scene, this book paint a very vivid and bleak portrait of a young girl coming of age.
The characters are nicely developed and the bleak turns the story takes keep you engaged throughout.
A promising debut from a promising author whom I believe has more to offer.
This book offers all the promise of a good author. But it did screen "debut". It'll be interesting to read more recent works by Zoe Whittall.
Set in the backdrop of Montreal, with all the seediness of the gay scene, this book paint a very vivid and bleak portrait of a young girl coming of age.
The characters are nicely developed and the bleak turns the story takes keep you engaged throughout.
A promising debut from a promising author whom I believe has more to offer.
October 7, 2016
This is a book of discovery.
First freedom, first love, first big disappointment and ultimately the discovery that
whatever excess we choose will consume us. p47
The problem with true stories is they almost always end in loss.
Sometimes the difference between fiction and non-fiction is almost arbitrary. p150
Bottle Rocket Hearts falls into this arbitrary space. Ultimately, it fizzes but never really sparkles.
Maybe it suffers from too much hype. Montreal is the most appealing character.
First freedom, first love, first big disappointment and ultimately the discovery that
whatever excess we choose will consume us. p47
The problem with true stories is they almost always end in loss.
Sometimes the difference between fiction and non-fiction is almost arbitrary. p150
Bottle Rocket Hearts falls into this arbitrary space. Ultimately, it fizzes but never really sparkles.
Maybe it suffers from too much hype. Montreal is the most appealing character.
June 23, 2014
What a good novel. The characters are vibrant, as are the descriptions of Montreal. I liked the slightly non-linear narrative structure and how Whittal brings everything together at the end. While the back cover indicates main story as a coming-of-age, the politics and Anglo/Franco tensions around the '95 referendum made for a complex and fascinating background.
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