sewn paper
Fiction, Punk
March 2002
144 pages
ISBN 0-88984-232-9
$14.95
e-mail The Author
13
Mary-Lou ZeitounOne of the Top Ten Books of 2002, According to Now Magazine:
`What made 2002 wonderful was the mind-blowing work from new
writers.... Zeitoun gets right into the head of a teenager growing up in
1980 in this kick-ass comic novel....'
- Susan G. Cole, Now
And The Globe and Mail named Mary-Lou Zeitoun one of its `Ten [Writers] to Watch' in 2002:
`Anybody fearing for the future of Canadian writing need look no further than
the authors we are showcasing today.... Reading 13 is like going through adolescence all over again.
Mary-Lou Zeitoun ... has written a dramatic monologue in the voice of
Marnie Harmon, a raging, passionate, smart and rebellious Ottawa
teenager.... Marnie's voice, trembling between the playfulness of a
child and the sneering bravado of an adolescent, is captivating.'
- Sandra Martin, Review Editor, The Globe and Mail
`Mary-Lou Zeitoun
captures the world of a teenager in all her funny, frightening, vulnerable,
horrible, trouble and wonderful glory. There isn't a thing out of place in the
book. Not a word or an image or sock I could point at and say, ``Aha! Wrong! Must
do better!'' 13 is too good for that. I loved it.'
- Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize winner for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
and author of The Commitments
`[Zeitoun is] terrific at setting, and has a cinematic sensibility ...
Zeitoun is also terrific at the pensive, vacillating, intimate,
interior moments that really make a reader's breathing shift.'
- Natalee Caple, The Globe and Mail
`Mary-Lou Zeitoun captures the self-obsessed, sullen, frustrating essence of what it is to
be a semi-outcast adolescent girl so adroitly that I got spooked.... Here we all
were thinking what misunderstood individuals we were and this woman sums us all
up in 144 neatly bound pages.'
- Elizabeth Bromstein, Now Magazine
It's 1980 and Marnie Harmon is trapped in the suburbs and surrounded by disco and polyester. Dreaming of John Lennon and New York she discovers the comparatively kind world of punk rock and is soon hanging out with strippers, drinking beer and smoking in the girl's room.
13 has been optioned for a film, is on its second print run and is continuing to garner rave reviews across the country. Zeitoun has been featured on Book Television several times and will be profiled on Bravo's The Writing Life in the Winter 2003 series.
Photo by Jennifer Rowson