The year is 1980 and Marnie Harmon hates her real world. "My [bedroom] window looked out on a dumb view...Nothing to see but other people's swimming pools and petunia borders. 'Marnie, don't be so Negative,' my mother always said. Mom would get mad at Anne Frank for being scared of the Nazis. She would think Anne Frank was being 'Negative'." Pg. 8.No boring teenspeak here. Marnie is a straight-A student with razor sharp wit and the insight to go with it. Or does she? She is only 13 and besides one or two friends, she only finds comfort in dreams of meeting John Lennon. How realistic is that? Very realistic when your 13, confused about boys, parents, your life in the suburbs and one of your friends is a stripper. Perhaps dreams not only provide escape, they are necessary. Marnie might think her life is mediocre but I found it original, fun-filled, and Zeitoun's insight into her main character, thought provoking. Zeitoun has given Marnie a burgeoning feminist voice and strength which women twice her age could only dream of. "[Dad] goes to a church that won't let women be priests so he was not on my side. He'd stop the prejudice if he was on my side...Dad once said...it would take two hundred more years for women to have equality so why did I bother fighting so much? That's not true. One day women didn't have the vote, the next day they did. It took one day. Sometimes it takes overnight." Page 114-5No wonder Marnie wants to run away to New York to meet the man she imagines John Lennon to be. Zeitoun has wonderfully interwoven real events into her main character's lives, for 1980 proves to be as "eventful" for John Lennon as it does for Marnie. I suspect there is a semi-autobiographical truth to 13's contents.13 reminds us of our own youthful fantasies, our personal battles, and if we're old enough, disco, polyester and the days before the words "politically correct" entered our vocabulary. Mary-Lou Zeitoun's debut novel has just been chosen one of Canada's Now Magazine's Top 10 books of 2002.
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.