First-time novelist Mary-Lou Zeitoun’s 13 wryly evokes an unavoidable time and place in everyone’s life -- the teenage years -- without rendering the experience into saccharine nostalgia. Zeitoun’s imitation of the adolescent voice is dead-on, without falling into repetitious teenspeak.
It’s 1980 and 13-year-old Marnie Harmon is trapped in the suburbs. She’s surrounded by disco, polyester, patriarchy, and pervy teachers who seem to be sleeping with her friends. After an ill-conceived murder attempt on one of the said pervy teachers, Marnie is sent to an all-girls Catholic school. There she discovers the punk world -- soon she is hanging out with strippers, drinking beer and smoking in the girls’ room. Yet the inanity of school and parents drive her to seek refuge in her dream of meeting John Lennon in New York. But New York is a long way from Ottawa and Marnie doesn’t have the bus fare. Will she make it to New York? Will she be thrown in jail for attempting to murder her teacher? Will music save her soul?