The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O'Neill

Author : Heather O'Neill
Title : The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
Published : 2014
Publisher : River Run
Pages : 416
Genre : contemporary Fiction

      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.

     While my love for contemporary fiction has definitely grown in recent times I seem to be going for a more specific form of it with each reading. I like to delve into the dark and seedier side of things. Reading about the dark side of life for some reason seems to work. And when coming to this book that is what I was most defiantly looking for. The blurb on the back seemed to fit the bill, What happens when all the fame has gone when the wave has crashed down and people are starting to forget who you were. More so in the case of the twins as there fame was second hand. I think it must be hard to be famous at such an early age it can't possibly give you a very good view of the world. And more than often it seems to come with an overbearing parent. In this case, that of the twins father the real famous one. The stark realities of having been dumped by him mean that they have a real problem with dealing with the world. 

     The book follows how they try to come to terms with everything that has been thrown at them. From getting a job to learning how to live this is just the begin of there problems. What the author delivers is an eye-opening look into there lives with no subject to off limits. But this is not the thing of those expose biographies of child stars. Firstly being fiction means that they don't have to survive in any real-world sense of the day today. And also at least to me nothing was written with the intent to shock. To rip the reader away and proclaim to the world you will never guess what happened. It is so easy to get intertwined with the fates of the twins as you follow the highs and lows of everyday life with them. To some extent, they feel very naive in the world like new born's and I suppose in some sort of metaphorical way they are. They also carry that thing that all siblings seem to have A true and deep love for each other, but also these moments of hate and a need to escape being defined by each other. It is a complex mixture of emotions that I am all too familiar with. 

     As I read this book I could not help but feel a comparison to that of the books put out by the beat generation. It is that feeling of dirt under your fingernails as you try to make your way in the world. These are people who in all likely hood will not reach great heights or the case of the twins again. But want to find a place they can belong where their worries are less and they can grasp just a little of that warm feeling. There where moments within this book that felt very bleak to me which counteract those moments when sheer unadulterated joy washes over them sometimes for the strangest of reasons. But I suppose this reflects there emotional states, they may look like adults but in many ways, they are not. This is not helped along by the fact that to the minds of everyone in Quebec that is who the will forever be. The author does a great job of exploring this complex mixture of emotions and topics throughout her book. 

     She also floats in the background this notion of Independence for Quebec. A topic that until recently I didn't really have much knowledge of, I suppose coincidence do come up more often than not as it has I have both seen and read about it a lot over the past few months. With Brexit happening in my own country it is a strange thing for the first time my country is pulling away from outside rule and not the other way round. From what I have witnessed they have never really felt a part of Canada and throughout its time have been treated like second class citizens. A feeling in some ways mirrored by the twin's new life trying to figure out what is to become of them. 

     To me when I think of this book I see the twins lying on a bed in some grimy run down hotel illuminated by the harsh light of a neon sign. Despite there surroundings there head are still filled with laughter and big dreams. Just waiting to meet the next eccentric character in a line that stretches around the block. This book captures another time and place, it belongs to the twins and the heartbreakingly, sorrowful, beautiful and funny road they are on.