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Product Description
Books in Canada
Zoe Whittall’s Bottle Rocket Hearts comprises a journey through the unforgiving territory of the heart. Eve is a young woman in search of love and perfection, on the hunt for another heart like her own. She comes from a home that “smells like oregano and brewed coffee and vanilla candles,” but she is determined to tear through the curtain of what she regards as fake suburban security. Desperate to escape her parents’ narrow world, Eve falls in love with an older woman, Della, who is both seductive and steadfastly unfaithful. Against a backdrop of biker bombs and the Quebec referendum of 1995, eighteen-year-old Eve tries to figure out who she is and what she wants.
Her explorations of sex, independence, and politics are poignant and oddly naive. “Everything I had was imperfect in some way” she declares, yearning for the elegant dexterity of her gay friends. She moves in with a couple of roommates, Rachel and Seven, and their cat named Gertrude Stein. One of them is a stripper, one of them is HIV-positIve, and Eve is depressed by her own caution, her own yearning for comfort and monogamy. All of her friends are cooler, tougher, bolder than she is. “Compared to Jenny, I was a cautious introvert. Compared to Seven, I was a great-grandmother.” She is the one who looks innocent and child-like.
While strong teen spirit provides this novel with indubitable energy, the book trades too much on its patina of sex and swearing, recreational drug use, and the erotic space of want. Eve’s jealousy about Della’s many liaisons seems almost illogical, given how much she seeks to toughen her heart. Ultimately, then, this is just another disappointed love story, where one of the two pretends to be something she is not (Della), and the other falls wide-eyed into love’s quicksand. The title of the novel is perfect: it is a “dollar store bottle rocket,” the kind that fizzles as it falls.
Aritha van Herk (Books in Canada)
Her explorations of sex, independence, and politics are poignant and oddly naive. “Everything I had was imperfect in some way” she declares, yearning for the elegant dexterity of her gay friends. She moves in with a couple of roommates, Rachel and Seven, and their cat named Gertrude Stein. One of them is a stripper, one of them is HIV-positIve, and Eve is depressed by her own caution, her own yearning for comfort and monogamy. All of her friends are cooler, tougher, bolder than she is. “Compared to Jenny, I was a cautious introvert. Compared to Seven, I was a great-grandmother.” She is the one who looks innocent and child-like.
While strong teen spirit provides this novel with indubitable energy, the book trades too much on its patina of sex and swearing, recreational drug use, and the erotic space of want. Eve’s jealousy about Della’s many liaisons seems almost illogical, given how much she seeks to toughen her heart. Ultimately, then, this is just another disappointed love story, where one of the two pretends to be something she is not (Della), and the other falls wide-eyed into love’s quicksand. The title of the novel is perfect: it is a “dollar store bottle rocket,” the kind that fizzles as it falls.
Aritha van Herk (Books in Canada)
NOW Magazine
"Bottle Rocket Hearts... 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.... Buy it, read it, and then keep it for you daughters."
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
caught off guard,
By SSKMB (Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bottle Rocket Hearts (Paperback)
First I have to say that this book is about lesbian and gay relationships in the 90's. I wasn't aware of that and might not have picked up the book had I known. It's just a little foreign to me.
That said, I was whisked away by Zoe's amazing writing in the first couple pages - before figuring out the subject matter. I finished the book and really, REALLY enjoyed her writing. I'll look forward to reading her future novels.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stole My Heart,
By D. Sorel "book lovah" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bottle Rocket Hearts (Paperback)
Do not be fooled by this slender novel because Whittall packs in quite a punch! Set against the backdrop of Montreal's 1995 referendum, Whittall brings the reader into a world where rebellion is the norm and assimilation is not a guarantee. It is here that the reader meets Eve who is young and naive in this changing city. She wants more than anything to move out of her parents' house and start a life of her own. When she meets Della, Eve thinks that she has found the answer to her prayers. Della is older, experienced, and wild. While Eve learns a great deal from Della's antics, she learns even more from herself and her reactions to life with Della. In a roundabout way, she is finally able to accept herself and gain confidence in her decisions.
The turmoil of the 1990s in Montreal is a fantastic setting for this novel in which all of the main characters are in emotional flux. Whittall's writing is refreshing and a delight to read. Her characters have great depth and even those who are antagonizing someone find a way to win your heart. Overall, this is well-worth a read and a re-read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
a sort of creative autobiography for those who have tried to live in uncharted territory,
By Elevate Difference "Elevate Difference" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bottle Rocket Hearts (Paperback)
If I were to describe Bottle Rocket Hearts as a sort of creative autobiography replete with journal excerpts and a first person narrator, which also reads like a queer coming of age novel, you probably wouldn't want to read it. But for anyone who has ever tried to align their politics with their personal life and discovered a plethora of limits and contradictions, this book will be a fun, fast-paced read. And it has punk rock bulging from the seams and postmodern emotional conundrums that will resonate with those who have tried to live in uncharted territory. Having read Zoe Whittal's tightly crafted tale, I've had to reassess my position on the idea that diaries are cheesy and coming of age novels are boring. Bottle Rocket Hearts suggests otherwise.
The narrative follows Eve - an eighteen-year-old lesbian living in the suburbs of Montreal - through her first "Revolutionary Relationship" with Della who thinks Eve is older than she is. We witness Eve's multifarious developments: her attempt to forge a new community of "queers and artists and adulthood;" get an apartment downtown; make mixed tapes; do drugs; get and lose a job, friends and a girlfriend. She becomes an activist and has ridiculous pangs of jealousy when the girlfriend's ex (aptly named XXXX because "her name is too evil to write or say out loud") makes an appearance to narrator Eve's "most insecure moments." I found Whittal's descriptions of the latter to be refreshingly bang-on, treated with a fantastic sense of humour and the distinct awareness of the ironies at play: "intellectually non-monogamy made complete sense; emotionally it felt like sand-paper across my eyelids." And this is one of my favorite lines: "The trouble with deciding not to define anything is that it usually means you have to talk a lot more about what you're not defining than you would if you employed the time-honoured grade nine approach to Going Steady." We find out early on that for the narrator "people who journal always seem more grounded" and, later on, "the difference between fiction and non is almost arbitrary." In a sense, the changes found in the narrator's attitudes towards writing, starting from a position where the diary represents a space for grounding thoughts (i.e., transparency, honesty) to the realization that truth and fiction are (unfortunately) difficult to discern, also marks out the space of her coming of age, personally and as an author. And coming of age is probably a convenient misnomer in this case, because Bottle Rocket Hearts is more about the negotiations involved in coming into an identity, a process that is arguably endless and nuanced rather than fixed and simple. "'Femme.' I mouthed it to myself, giggling. 'Okay.' For some reason this sounded good, like it fit more than any other moniker hoisted on me like queer, lesbian, bi, whatever. None of those felt right. Femme. Okay, that works."
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enchanting.,
By groovymamma - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bottle Rocket Hearts (Paperback)
An original tale written in a unique voice. Eve is a young woman coming of age and coming out at the same time, the results of which are well explored in this beautifully written narrative. Eve meets Della, an older lesbian whom charms her young self into a passionate love affair, Eve's first. Issues like homophobia and jealousy are explored in detail amid a backdrop of an alternative lifestyle set in 90's Montreal, complete with rallies and murder, music and art.
The main character is fully realized and completely lovable with her lethal combination of vulnerability and strength. The other characters too, read real and alive, especially her roomate Seven, a gay struggling with his HIV status and joie de vivre. Through tragedy and love, Eve comes to learn that everyone is in possession of a "bottle rocket heart"..."common, sturdy, but still potentially explosive". An amazing talent. |
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