Heartbreaker
A missing mother. An isolated community. Three storytellers you will never forget.
For fans of The Water Cure and The Girls
‘A dark star of a book’ LAUREN GROFF
‘I loved its every page’ SHEILA HETI
‘Heartbreaker totally bewitched me’ LENI ZUMAS
In subzero temperatures, mother Billie Jean Fontaine walks out of her bungalow barefoot, takes her husband’s truck and drives off into the wilderness alone.
She never returns.
But no one ever leaves The Territory, a community cut off from the rest of the world, a place warped by its own strange ways where the people believe the year is 1985. Here they live by their own rules – until this woman breaks them.
Through the eyes of her unforgettable daughter, Pony Darlene, Billie Jean’s violently loyal dog and a watchful teenage boy, Heartbreaker shines an electrifying light on a woman who has risked everything for freedom and love, and left dark secrets in her wake.
”'Heartbreaker is an incandescent flare of a novel - acrobatic, devastating, and wickedly funny. It is effortlessly sly and fresh in its language, and I loved it” - Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
”'Heartbreaker totally bewitched me. I love its outlandishness - its sizzling energy - the bright, fierce music in every sentence” - Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks
”'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 unravelling it from the other” - The Paris Review
”'I read My Absolute Darling and discovered a transcendent teenage narrator in the form of Turtle Alveston. Pony Darlene Fontaine is a match for Turtle - an ordinary teenage girl in a wholly extraordinary world. Her voice will echo in your head for months - even years - to come” - Sam Baker, The Pool
”'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
”'Disturbed, seductive, and thrilling” - i-D
”'Behold the virtuosity of Heartbreaker! Claudia Dey has a perfect ear and the sharpest eye … devastating, unsparing and unforgettable” - Miriam Toews, author of All My Puny Sorrows
”'A whole-cloth, word-for-word triumph of imagination” - Publishers Weekly
”'This book gave me chills all the way through. It is deeply original - in its wildness, its structure, its wisdom, and its world. I floated in the perfection of its ending. I loved this novel's shining sensitivity. I loved its every page” - Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?
‘Beautiful … A perfect balancing act of dark and light’Claire Cameron, author of The Bear -
”'A dark star of a book, glittering with mordant humour and astonishing, seductive strangeness and grace. I am a giant fan of Claudia Dey’s wild brain” - Lauren Groff