I was 20% into this book, and I had NO IDEA what I had read. It reads like a stream of consciousness. Jumping from one short snippet to another.

At times I wondered, is this really based in the 80s, or is this group of people stuck in a time warp based on being out in the middle of nowhere. I think the part that interested me about the story was the cult aspect. That wasn’t even mentioned until about 40% of the way through.

Maybe I just missed something?

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Heartbreaker has a great premise, but the actual plot is a bit of a mess. The structure is compelling, but it isn't executed well and was nearly impossible to follow. With both a messy story AND badly managed structure, this wasn't worth the effort for me.

Historical
Mystery
Pony Darlene Fontaine is 15 years old, and today she watches her mother come out of the bedroom, clad only in a tracksuit, and walk out the front door without a word. Stopping to call her dog, she climbs into the truck and drives off. Billie Jean hasn’t been out of the house for three months. It’s now late October, 1985, and she is barefoot. Where has Billie Jean gone? Why did she leave? Why has she been hiding herself away these past months? Why has she told Pony so little of her story? So many questions! We learn the Fontaines live in “the Territory,” a remote Northern settlement established years ago by a cult leader. Billie Jean arrived 17 years ago, as mysteriously as she left, the only outsider ever to join the community, which now numbers nearly 400. With the closing of the mines, residents of the Territory are obliged to resort to drastic measures to sustain their community. It’s an odd place, and Pony is desperate to leave it, though she has little idea of just what life is like in the real world. Ultimately, this story of motherhood and lies, of love and desperation, can best be described as a really odd duck. It’s divided into three sections, each with a different narrator. It opens with Pony’s story, and it takes some commitment to stick with it through this confusing part. Pony doesn’t make a lot of sense, because she really has no clue of what is going on; it does offer a dive into 80s culture, complete with a Walkman and padded shoulders. The second narrator is Billie Jean’s dog, lending a welcome bit of humour but also some startling revelations. The dog is actually the most articulate narrator of the bunch, and is a delightful character as a result. (Is there something Canadian in including talking dogs in adult books? I’m thinking of Giller winner Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis.) The third narrator is an 18-year-old known by his nickname Supernatural. All the boys in this community earn nicknames as they become men – Wishbone, Sexeteria, Traps, The Heavy, Hot Dollar. The girls don’t, except for one who rejects her birth name of Grace in favour of Future. Because as Billie Jean asks, can’t a woman be more than one person? While this is a story about womanhood, there is no denying the rampant sexism, illustrated by the fact the boys have trouble keeping track of the girls’ names until they get their name necklace as they marry. The book gets a lot better as it advances, as the narrators slowly reveal the clues and Billie Jean’s story is unveiled. It’s certainly not for everyone – when I described it to a friend, she said “it sounds very Canadian.” Indeed – desperation and longing in a northern setting with deadly weather. I did like it in the end. My thanks to Random House Canada for the advance reading copy provided digitally through NetGalley.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38255328

I think the premise and idea of this one was more intriguing than the actual outcome. Immediately I was set on loving this one for the sole fact that it was a mystery set in the 80s. I just feel ultimately confused after reading this one. I honestly don’t know if I loved it or hated it. I think the alternating points of view were interesting, I just think it gave me a weird unsettled sort of feeling in the end.

I was confused by the beginning section of this story. Instead of abandoning the book, I decided to skim and read, skim and read until the end. The story got better and had some surprising twists. The format of the book is unique, particularly part two. If I reread it, I'd probably enjoy it more. The author took a lot of risks with this story, which I respect. I'd certainly read something else by the author. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for for an ARC.

Considering the wealth of recent works that marry genre conventions with literary fiction, you might think that there’s little left in the way of potential surprises. No matter how rich the vein might be – and it has proven to be rich indeed – you’d imagine that it would be difficult to mine something new and fresh from that lode.

And then you read something like Claudia Dey’s “Heartbreaker” and realize that there are creative powerhouses out there continuing to strike literary gold. It’s a novel about coming of age and motherhood and sexual politics wrapped in a sci-fi dressing of alternate history and cult dynamics. It is powerful and thought-provoking and unrelentingly weird – both in the tale and in the telling.

It shines.

In an unfamiliar 1985, we are introduced to an unnamed settlement known simply as “the territory.” In this place, an isolated outpost somewhere in the northern United States, people are bound to one another by their separation from the rest of the world. From its beginnings as an outsider cult founded by a charismatic leader, the territory has become a realm all its own – one that once financed itself via mining, but now gets by thanks to the exportation of an altogether more unsettling (and ever-renewable) resource.

The people follow the rules set forth by their long-gone leader. They wear track suits and listen to hair metal like Whitesnake and Nazareth and watch trashy television soaps. The men are given status through nicknames and the women are expected to be subordinate and subservient. They are completely and utterly bound by custom.

“Heartbreaker” is the story of Billie Jean Fontaine, a stranger who somehow made her way into the territory. Despite a mysterious past and an unwillingness to be forthcoming about that past, Billie Jean works her way into the fabric of the community. Despite the suspicions surrounding her, she winds up wed to The Heavy, one of the more eccentric and tragic residents of the territory.

But one day, Billie Jean walks out the front door, coatless and barefoot. She climbs into The Heavy’s truck and drives away without a word. She’s gone.

It’s Billie Jean’s story, but she doesn’t tell it. The tale instead unfolds in triptych. First, we hear from Pony Darlene, the teenaged daughter of Billie Jean and The Heavy. Pony adores her mother, but she doesn’t understand Billie Jean any more than her neighbors do. As she struggles to come to terms with her mother’s flight, we also get a glimpse into what it means to come of age in such a twisted, weird place.

Next, we hear from Gena Rowlands … the family dog. Dogs are ubiquitous in the territory, but the rules state that they should never be given names. Billie Jean flouted that convention like so many others by naming the dog. In many ways, Gena is Billie Jean’s sole confidant; she is also a stone killer unafraid to do anything to protect the woman she has come to love so fiercely.

And finally, we hear from Supernatural, a teenage boy who is one of the youngest ever to receive an official nickname. Supernatural is aloof and cool, admired by his peers and even many of the adults in the territory. But he has plenty of secrets of his own; the ties that bind him and his family to Billie Jean, Pony and The Heavy are intricate and elaborate while still remaining mostly beneath the surface.

And permeating all of it is the grisly foundation of the territory itself, as well as the unknown nature of the world outside – a world that few within the territory truly understand.

“Heartbreaker” is a stunning, compelling piece of work, a fully-formed world with its own unsettling customs and strange rules. The territory is the kind of literary realm that writers spend their whole lives trying to create, a place that – despite its weirdness – feels completely realized and utterly real. The entire book is packed with exquisite detail, every little throwaway reference a piece of a meticulously assembled puzzle.

There are subtle flavors throughout. Dey gives us a hint of cultish sexual dynamics here, a whiff of technological dystopia there, all of it amplified by an alternative past rife with references to that very specific time and place.

All this through not one, not two, but three beautifully realized narrative perspectives. The three-pronged approach to the storytelling is mesmeric, allowing Dey to plumb the depths of the tale with an unconventional fullness. Creating one compelling narrator is difficult enough – creating three indicates a flat-out massive talent.

“Heartbreaker” is unlike any other book you’re likely to read this year. It is strange and smart in the best possible ways, a triumph of the weird that commingles the poignant and the perverse. It’s a masterful work from the pen of a magnificent writer.

This is one of those otherworldly sort of books that constantly slips through your fingers as you read it. But keep grabbing at it because what a remarkable book.

Separated into three parts, each narrated by a different character, the story revolves around a small, remote place called the territory. It's one of those towns where everyone knows everyone else's business, but things are a bit weirder here, as is slowly revealed throughout the first part.

The central figure is one Billie Jean Fontaine, but she's gone missing. The first part is narrated by her daughter, Pony, the second by her loyal dog, and the third by a boy nicknamed Supernatural, a boy all the girls in the territory have their sights set on.

The book is a tangle of the past and present, everyone's memories colliding with what is currently happening to bring about a picture of Billie Jean that's fuzzy around the edges—the only person we don't hear from is her. From her mythic entrance to the territory, to how she never fully fit in, to the secrets of her long past and not so long past, the blank edges of a woman are filled in through the thoughts, memories, and opinions of those who were close to her.

It goes back to what I said about the book slipping through your fingers. Billie Jean's ephemerality makes her difficult to grab hold of, but that's the point. And underlying all the character-driven narration, there is the place, the territory. Where is it? How did it come to be and why do they all seem to take it for granted that the way they are living is life as it should be?

It is definitely worth mentioning that the narration by the dog is some beautiful, weird, and deeply original writing. Dogs know our deepest secrets, see everything inside us and yet are silent. What if they could speak, eloquently, release their thoughts, their deep observations about us, the world, the history and the connections of how things came to be? What a brilliant concept and so wonderfully executed in this book.

REVIEW
The 80s are back in fashion, and they are back in books. Claudia Dey's Heartbreaker is a quirky but engaging read about a missing mother and the reverberations that are felt by that. Add in a town that thinks it is still 1985, and you get this fascinating novel. It's different, but it's a good different.

PRAISE
“A fierce exploration of memory and zeitgeist…Heartbreaker is a darkly comedic weirdo of a book that pulls the string of nostalgia from one side while unraveling it from the other.”—The Paris Review

“This is a book like no other. It’s eerie, it’s cult-y, it’s so very exciting, and I never wanted it to end.”—Buzzfeed, Best Books of Fall 2018

AUTHOR
CLAUDIA DEY’s writing has appeared in The Paris Review and The Believer Magazine. Her novel Stunt (published in Canada by Coach House Books) was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, and was a Globe & Mail and Quill & Quire Book of the Year. Her plays have been produced internationally, and nominated for the Governor General’s Award and Trillium Book Award. Dey is co-founder and co-creator of the design label Horses Atelier, which has been featured in Vogue. Dey lives in Toronto with her family.

Heartbreaker is an odd, twisting tale of a girl searching for her vanished mother. In reality, her mother had vanished gradually, diminishing her role as wife and mother months before she physically left them and the territory. The territory is an isolated area, cut off from the outside world seemingly by vast tracts of wilderness, but more likely by the myth-making of its inhabitants.

I've been recommending this books for the last 3 days to anyone who will listen and prefaced each time with "but I couldn't stand the first 60-80 pages, I didn't get it."

How to explain....? This will be a frustrating read for many. For me the whole first part made me want to bail so hard but I was committed to reviewing it and I knew there had to be something I was missing— and boy was I right! The story is told 3 ways in 3 big chapters. First it follows 15yo Pony Darlene, a very strange girl making her own way in the cult of the North. Second, it switches to the POV of her mother’s dog (unnamed but incredibly loyal), which I thought would be worse than Pony’s disjointed thoughts but mostly addressed Billie Jean’s (Pony’s mother) past and I was so thankful for the insight. Third was from a young boy’s POV, Supernatural. He’s the guy all the girls crush on and the son of the one truck dealer in the territory. (Can’t say more without spoilers).

There were a few twists I was glad I stuck around for. This definitely felt like an instance of an author holding the answers close and playing a little bit of “I’m smarter than you, don’t you see?”, yet I also felt privileged to read it. I didn’t realize right away that the secluded territory in the upper reaches of Canada was a cult, but I guess by the end I’d made myself an honorary member and better understood their ways. It was a strange experience doing a full 180 from hating the book, ready to give a 1 or 2-star review, to hanging on to every word coming from a dog’s interior thoughts— but I’m impressed. Definitely interested in hearing from other readers who bailed or also made it through!

This novel had just too much going on for me. Pony Darlene Fontaine grew up in a cultish commune known as The Territory. The story opens in the mid 1980’s (with all of the accompanying shoulder pads and big hair) with Pony’s mother leaving the house after being house-bound for 3 months. She tries to find her mother and the story of the territory unfolds along the way. In a place where men are known only by nicknames, 80’s kitch abounds and the abundant dialogue is full of snark and quick-fire conversations, the territory itself is not the only oddity. The story is told in three parts, narrated by “the girl; the dog; and the boy”. All of this was Too many gimmicks for me and, ultimately, I lost interest in the story.

Heartbreaker took me by surprise. I was not expecting to like this book as much as I did. With so much more to the story than there seems, it's hard to talk about without spoiling the mystery that grows eerily through the chapters. Heartbreaker has its main mystery, but the surrounding elements of the town and its inhabitants don't quite add up leaving you with unspoken questions.

Billie Jean leaves her house one night without her shoes or jacket leaving her husband and teenage daughter behind without answers. The town they live in is so secluded that no one has left it, except for Billie Jean, who arrived just as mysteriously 17 years ago. Told from three perspectives, Heartbreaker explores the nuances of the town, the people and their culture. Each section reveals another piece of the story.

For fans of horror and mystery, this subtle story will leave you uncomfortable but wanting more.

I don't want to say much because this book was so different and refreshing and awesome. It is best to read no reviews. Don't dig- just read it. It is told in 3 points of view and they are all fabulous, but I especially like Supernatural. Read this book. Five beautiful stars.

I loved the first third of this book, told from the perspective of Pony Darlene. The second two thirds lost me a bit. While the book is really good and character building, the world building just sort of tapered off after a bit and I just wanted more about the world, how it got to be the way it was, and how it got stuck in the 1980s. The big 'twist' was heavily foreshadowed, and I wanted more from the ending. Still, the writing had beautiful moments and for the first third alone I'm happy I read it.

I really enjoyed this title and have purchased a physical copy. You figure you’re getting a book full of cheeky 80’s references but you get a lot more out of this quick read. I read it in a day. It’s subtle genius. I could see a lot of people not finishing this one because it ends up being unconventional at first in a few ways. First thing to know, part two of the novel is told from the perspective of a dog, which helps to move the story along in a new way, I found it mostly poignant and have a soft spot for dogs, dog narration. Second, the characters in the book believe they are living in 1985 because they only have access to TV shows and magazines of the time thanks to their territory being founded by a cult around that time? At least that’s one way of looking at it. Could just be the creative license because the glam-trashiness of the 80’s allows for a vivid setting. The novel ends up not being about that. It’s about family. Untangling a family tree and getting to know a community that just so happens it’s cut off from the world we know in 2018. Powering through was worth it to me but I could see it being a tough sell for others.

A stranger comes to town - a favored trope in fiction - is the centerpiece of this disturbing, inventive novel about a mother and daughter in a nameless northern settlement aptly named the Territory, claimed two generations earlier by a charismatic leader and a group of his followers and isolated from the rest of civilization since then. The stranger is Billie, a young woman who showed up in the Territory in a stolen car years ago, refusing to talk about her past and eventually settling into something like domesticity in a place whose economy, such as it is, depends o n a bizarre commodity - the blood of adolescents. One of them is Poiny, who is as mystified by her mother, Billie, as everyone else is, including Heavy, their long-suffering husband and father. When Billie disappears almost as mysteriously as she arrived, Pony is devastated, and so are Billie' s faithful dog and Supernatural, the teenage boy who narrate parts of the novel. While the denouement us somewhat confusing, the haunting, elegiac tone of Heartbreaker remains long after the last page is turned.

The premise for this book sounded really interesting but the story is so weird and confusing that I finally gave up on it.

It is impossible to describe why this book is so good. Despite the description, almost nothing happens within the actual plot, but so much happens everywhere else. There is a cult that matters, but also mostly doesn't matter to the story. The middle part is told from the perspective of a dog.

It's hard to explain, but you should definitely read it.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC.

Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey
Penguin Random House Group: 8/21/18
eBook review copy; 272 pages
ISBN-13: 9780525511731

Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey is a highly recommended, quirky, unique character driven novel that is part dystopian, part alternate reality.

The territory is an isolated cult/settlement that was founded in the north decades ago. In the territory is it 1985, including the music, TV shows, listening to Walkmans, album covers, shoulder pads, track suits, and more. The narrative is told in three parts from the point-of-view of three different characters: the girl, the dog, and the boy.

The girl is fifteen-year-old Pony Darlene Fontaine. Pony is our first introduction to the territory and the one who begins the story of her mother, Billie Jean Fontaine, who has taken the truck and left her family. Billie Jean arrived in the territory seventeen years earlier, married The Heavy, Pony's father, and tried to fit in with the townspeople who never totally accepted her. Now the town is helping to search for her, but never beyond their own borders. Pony is an excellent character who is examining her circumstances, her mother's life, and has a plan. She is also the one who introduces us to a sinister way the territory makes money.

The dog is the Fontaines' and brings a unique perspective and keen observations to the story about Billie Jean, the community, and all the characters, while furthering the narrative thread. The boy, named Supernatural, adds additional information and completes the story, allowing a complete picture to emerge.

Telling the story only through the first person perspective of these three characters and what they know is utterly extraordinary. I was uncertain about Heartbreaker for almost half the novel and then the story began to emerge and take shape. It increasingly became a compelling, fascinating look at a community, setting aside their isolation and the peculiar features of the cult, through the eyes of three very different, unique characters.

The ending was the clincher and increased my assessment of the whole novel. I also keep thinking about the novel based on the ending and want to re-read it someday to catch information and clues I might have missed.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House Group.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/08/heartbreaker.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2502308514
https://www.librarything.com/work/21039429/book/159623086
https://twitter.com/SheTreadsSoftly/status/1031982305399721984

Great for fans of kooky science fiction, Heartbreaker is definitely not for most readers. However, if you are looking for something different, you will love this book as much as I do.

Pony Darlene was born and raised in a cult. Her mother has run off and her dad’s nickname is the Heavy. What does a fifteen-year-old need to do to score a boyfriend and eventual husband in this cult? And why does the territory draw blood regularly from all the females?

Wow, the world building here is awesome incorporating Warren Jeff’s FLDS with the weird physics of Stranger Things. I hate to say more because it is a much better read if you don’t know even the basic plot. However, if you are ready for something different, this is it.

I’m happy that a major publisher, Random House, took on such a difficult book to categorize. I can’t even say whether this is science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, horror or literary fiction. Judging by the early reviews, you will either hate or love Heartbreaker. Personally, I loved it. 5 stars!

Thanks to the publisher, Random House, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.