The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

From the author of the international bestseller Lullabies For Little Criminals, a coming-of-age novel set on the seedy side of Montreal’s St. Laurent Boulevard 

“What really shines here is O’Neill’s writing. The author stuns with the vivid descriptions and metaphors that are studded throughout the book... O'Neill’s writing grows ever more distinct and direct.”  -  Kirkus Reviews

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. 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.

"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."  -  The Guardian, UK

With all the wit and poignancy that made Baby such a beloved character in Lullabies For Little Criminals, Heather O'Neill writes of an unusual family and what binds them together and tears them apart. The Girl Who Was Saturday Night is classic, unforgettable Heather O’Neill.