The girl who was Saturday night

405 pages

English language

Published Jan. 1, 2014

ISBN:: 978-0-374-16266-5
OCLC Number:: 858731075

(1 review)

"Nineteen years old, free of prospects, and inescapably famous, the twins Nicholas and Nouschka Tremblay are trying to outrun the notoriety of their father, a French-Canadian Serge Gainsbourg with a genius for the absurd and for winding up in prison. "Back in the day, he could come home from a show with a paper bag filled with women's underwear. Outside of Québec nobody had even heard of him, naturally. Québec needed stars badly." Since the twins were little, Étienne has made them part of his unashamed seduction of the province, parading them on talk shows and then dumping them with their decrepit grandfather while he disappeared into some festive squalor. Now Étienne is washed up and the twins are making their own almost-grown-up messes, with every misstep landing on the front pages of the tabloid Allo Police. Nouschka not only needs to leave her childhood behind; she also has to …

"Nineteen years old, free of prospects, and inescapably famous, the twins Nicholas and Nouschka Tremblay are trying to outrun the notoriety of their father, a French-Canadian Serge Gainsbourg with a genius for the absurd and for winding up in prison. "Back in the day, he could come home from a show with a paper bag filled with women's underwear. Outside of Québec nobody had even heard of him, naturally. Québec needed stars badly." Since the twins were little, Étienne has made them part of his unashamed seduction of the province, parading them on talk shows and then dumping them with their decrepit grandfather while he disappeared into some festive squalor. Now Étienne is washed up and the twins are making their own almost-grown-up messes, with every misstep landing on the front pages of the tabloid Allo Police. Nouschka not only needs to leave her childhood behind; she also has to leave her brother, whose increasingly erratic decisions might take her down with him" --

5 editions

crabbygirl reviewed The girl who was Saturday night by Heather O'Neill

Review of 'The girl who was Saturday night' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

wow, this girl can write: 'there was a man sitting on one of the chairs, wearing a tiger costume. the head of the tiger was sitting on the chair next to him. both he and the tiger head were looking straight ahead, as if they had had an argument and weren't speaking.'
and
'our hair ruined all the photographs of us as childen. no matter what the setting, even if it was our own birthday party, we looked like Gypsies at some internment camp in Eastern Europe...we looked like the type of people that had driven our car five thousand miles with a refridgerator on top of it.'
and
'the black cat johann was purring like it had engine trouble. his tail kept reaching round like an arm scooping up all the poker chips off the table.'
or
'... white Pomeranian that had a face like a chewed-up toothbrush. the …

wow, this girl can write: 'there was a man sitting on one of the chairs, wearing a tiger costume. the head of the tiger was sitting on the chair next to him. both he and the tiger head were looking straight ahead, as if they had had an argument and weren't speaking.'
and
'our hair ruined all the photographs of us as childen. no matter what the setting, even if it was our own birthday party, we looked like Gypsies at some internment camp in Eastern Europe...we looked like the type of people that had driven our car five thousand miles with a refridgerator on top of it.'
and
'the black cat johann was purring like it had engine trouble. his tail kept reaching round like an arm scooping up all the poker chips off the table.'
or
'... white Pomeranian that had a face like a chewed-up toothbrush. the small dog was sitting in the part of the grocery cart where you ordinarily put a baby. the dog was trembling with excitement, wanting to hop up, like he was waiting to add a detail to your anecdote.'

Subjects

Children of celebrities
Twins
Brothers and sisters
Fiction

Places

Québec (Québec)