Deliriously decadent, wry, and darkly charming. I’m obsessed with the fanciful imagery and writing; it skews way more towards “tell” rather than “show”, but it works so well here! This book is like if someone made a queer retelling of Sofia Coppola’s 2006 “Marie Antoinette” and then injected it with cocaine, women’s rage, and sugar. ( )

I am finishing this book at the end of a cycle of six recent books by and about women including The Foundling, by Ann Leary, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, I’m Glad I My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy, and She Holds Up the Stars by Sandra Laronde (for young adults).

The theme of women in evolution or revolution is consistent with all of these books. Closest to O’Neill’s satirical and scatological novel is Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry, although both are deadly serious in these post-ME TOO books.

O’Neill is one of our funnier Canadian writers. She comes from the same rich vein of Quebec humour that animates Mordecai Richler, Roch Carrier, and the social commentary of Gabriel Roy, and Mavis Gallant.

I come from Toronto not Montreal and only dream of a writer who can do for the streets of Toronto what Heather O’Neill does for the streets and history of Montreal.

She creates a counterpoint of revolution between the French Revolution beginning in 1789 and another imagined revolution in Montreal in the mid nineteenth century roughly contemporary with the social revolutions of Europe including the Revolutions of 1848 that rocked Paris, the German states, Ireland, Hungary, Denmark, Moldavia, Poland, and others.

It is sometimes called The Springtime of Peoples.

This book might be dubbed “The Springtime of Righteous Pornography.”

Her characters carry the names of French revolutionaries including Jean-Paul Marat, Robespierre, thrown in with other characters in popular imagination including Marie Antoinette and the Marquis de Sade. Then she adds what appears to be one of her literary heroines, an ugly but prolific cross dressing George Sand.

We watch the evolutions of an artist and a capitalist. We also see women rise from their chains. From the control of rapists in the mold of film producer Harvey Weinstein. And we see women rise from the chains of gender, the suffocation of conventions placed on their sexuality, the writings of history where women have been written out.

Of course, this story is something of a Western-centric liberation fractured fairytale. We know that women in other cultures are far from liberation. Likewise people of other genders.

In an interview O’Neill herself tells us she intentionally satirized the “lean in” feminism of Sheryl Sanberg through Marie Antoine who becomes something of a she-devil after the death of her father and rape by her suitor.

Her lover and childhood friend Sadie takes to the pen to liberate herself from Victorian social mores.

The dénouement the story is something of a Wildean escapade with missing family members, revenge, and shocking revelations.

O’Neill took her time mashing genres. ( )

An enjoyable read but very low residue. Can’t remember it at all! ( )

Absolutely one of my favorite books of the year

I loved it. Every bit of it.

This is the story of two young girls, Marie and Sadie, who becomes friends, are separated by a tragic event, and reunite later in life. They both achieve notoriety in life: Marie as a heart-hearted factory owner and Sadie as a writer of pornography. I loved their characters, the feminism in the story and the parallels to the French Revolution. Set in the 1800s when women had few rights and fewer options, many of the women in this story are powerful and resilient.

So well done....very imaginative. ( )