So far I had read a good number of books which I didn’t really like or ones that were ok but not amazing. Luckily The Girl Who was Saturday Night is one of the best books I’ve read in the past seven weeks.
It’s coming of age story between twins who cannot live apart. The novel is told by one half of the twins, Nouschka Trembley and the setting is 1994 – 95 Quebec, during the great separatist referendum. For such a serious political situation Nouschka manages to chronicle everything with huge dollops of humor and this is what makes the novel so great.
The Girl who was Saturday Night is hilarious. I laughed many times at the comical observations, the bizarre and beautiful scenes and some of the ribald jokes which run through the book. Nouschka invents brilliant similes and has a singular worldview. Think of Holden Caufield, but better.
There are tropes that one finds in coming of age novels;desperate characters, abusive relations, tough times but because O’Neill creates such vibrant protagonists that all of these things seem minor.
I guess the ultimate message is that all families are psychotic, which could be true but none are a funny as the Trembleys.
This review was originally on Goodreads
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