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When We Lost Our Heads: A Novel
“Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive.”
Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend—until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.
Traveling from a repressive finishing school to a vibrant brothel, taking readers firsthand into the brutality of factory life and the opulent lives of Montreal’s wealthy, When We Lost Our Heads dazzlingly explores gender, sex, desire, class, and the terrifying power of the human heart when it can’t let someone go.
Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend—until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.
Traveling from a repressive finishing school to a vibrant brothel, taking readers firsthand into the brutality of factory life and the opulent lives of Montreal’s wealthy, When We Lost Our Heads dazzlingly explores gender, sex, desire, class, and the terrifying power of the human heart when it can’t let someone go.
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Community Reviews
Shocking! Unhinged! Compelling! Perverse!
Taking place in 1800's Montreal, this is a subversive and darkly funny coming of age tale about power, class and gender which views the female experience from multiple angles. Marie and Sadie were both fascinating and monstrous in the way behaved badly and outside of societal norms. I really liked that the story explored many aspects of liberation, obsession and revolt from different women's perspectives and how the divide between the working class and ridiculously wealthy influenced their extreme actions. At its core, women's relationship to desire and each other is the focus here, with Marie, Sadie and others engaged in all kinds of toxicity and debauchery which leads up to a truly twisted and humorous conclusion. The writing was so delightfully whimsical and disturbing in equal measure and the character tie-ins to figures from the French Revolution was also a really interesting approach too. The ending did feel a bit too rushed and neat for me, but I really enjoyed the book as a whole.
Taking place in 1800's Montreal, this is a subversive and darkly funny coming of age tale about power, class and gender which views the female experience from multiple angles. Marie and Sadie were both fascinating and monstrous in the way behaved badly and outside of societal norms. I really liked that the story explored many aspects of liberation, obsession and revolt from different women's perspectives and how the divide between the working class and ridiculously wealthy influenced their extreme actions. At its core, women's relationship to desire and each other is the focus here, with Marie, Sadie and others engaged in all kinds of toxicity and debauchery which leads up to a truly twisted and humorous conclusion. The writing was so delightfully whimsical and disturbing in equal measure and the character tie-ins to figures from the French Revolution was also a really interesting approach too. The ending did feel a bit too rushed and neat for me, but I really enjoyed the book as a whole.
Montreal. Late 1800's. Women's suffrage, child labour, factory conditions and how no one cares for the little guy. When We Lost Our Heads tells a story of two girls who come of age in most different and difficult circumstances. The Era of when working-poor women were awoken by internal instinct and realizing that they indeed matter. The coming of a turn of century and the clash between morality and provocative ideas in the front part of thought. Women helping women. Women turning on women. Women only in it to help themselves. O'Neil writes so beautifully, with such description that it feels like you are standing in the middle of one of the Miles; hearing, seeing, taking it all in. What allure must have been like in country so old.
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