When We Lost Our Heads
Ratings17
Average rating3.5
The #1 national bestseller “Marvelous . . . viciously funny and acutely intelligent” (Maclean’s), When We Lost Our Heads is the spellbinding story of two young women whose friendship is so intense it not only threatens to destroy them, it changes the course of history Marie Antoine is the charismatic, spoiled daughter of a sugar baron. At age twelve, with her pile of blond curls and unparalleled sense of whimsy, she’s the leader of all the children in the Golden Mile, the affluent strip of nineteenth-century Montreal where powerful families live. Until one day in 1873, when Sadie Arnett, dark-haired, sly and brilliant, moves to the neighbourhood. Marie and Sadie are immediately inseparable. United by their passion and intensity, they attract and repel each other in ways that set them both on fire. Marie, with her bubbly charm, sees all the pleasure of the world, whereas Sadie’s obsession with darkness is all-consuming. Soon, their childlike games take on the thrill of danger and then become deadly. Forced to separate, the girls spend their teenage years engaging in acts of alternating innocence and depravity, until a singular event unites them once more, with devastating effects. After Marie inherits her father’s sugar empire and Sadie disappears into the city’s gritty underworld, the working class begins to foment a revolution. Each woman will play an unexpected role in the events that upend their city—the only question is whether they will find each other once more. From the beloved Giller Prize-shortlisted author who writes “like a sort of demented angel with an uncanny knack for metaphor” (Toronto Star), When We Lost Our Heads is a page-turning novel that explores gender and power, sex and desire, class and status, and the terrifying strength of the human heart when it can’t let someone go.
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I did not like this at all. The prose was miserable to read (it's a bunch of sentence fragments telling you what everyone is thinking all the time), the “revolutionary” character is like a cartoon villain and the twist is both deeply stupid and reinforces the class divisions the book is supposedly against.
Historical fiction following the intense relationship between two very different girls, Marie Antoine and Sadie Arnett, as they grow up in 19th century Montreal. This book read as something decadent, kitsch, baroque, witty, dark. I wasn't expecting this from the summary but as soon as I started reading this book, it was clear that this read like a feminist and queer pastiche of a Victorian novel, reimagining France in the 18th century at the cusp of Revolution by transposing the action a century later in another country. The main characters were analogous to queen Marie Antoinette, the infamous Marquis de Sade, revolutionaries like George Danton and Maximilien de Robespierre. The different side characters were also adapted from real life historical figures and I really liked recognising all these details referring to historical figures, events and customs as it made for an engaging read.
I also loved how the author addressed themes of female desire, empowerment, independence, queerness, sexuality, gender identity, non conformity, literature as activism, revolution, privilege, working class conditions, etc etc
A couple of things I wasn't a fan of though: the book felt a bit too long, some part felt superfluous and I didn't care about some paragraphs about some of the side characters (like Sadie's family or Marie's father). Because of the tone of the book, I felt shortening its length would have made it more digestible. Also some characters were flip flopping their emotions a bit too fast. For some parts I wished the themes were better integrated into the story, as the dialogue and the character's thoughts felt like mouthpieces to the themes.
Overall I liked this book for the themes it presented especially the queer feminist twist on historical events.
