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The Town Slut's Daughter
Fiona Larochelle flees a harrowing home life only to land in Vancouver's violently blazing punk rock underground. Music provides a catalyst when she mines a talent for singing and songwriting to form an all-girl band, the Virgin Marries. After the group breaks up, Fiona is stranded in the New York City and forced to navigate a minefield of vice, drug abuse, jealous lovers and predatory record producers as she works to rebuild her dream. She discovers that although rage may have facilitated her quest in the beginning, it cannot deliver her. Amid the tumult of the LA Riots, Fiona bolts from her cocaine-fueled marriage to a modern-day Bluebeard. Throughout it all, a fierce, indomitable spirit prevails.
324 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2014
4 people are currently reading
811 people want to read
About the author
Heather Haley
8 books82 followersHeather Haley is a Vancouver writer, singer, and videopoetry pioneer. A member of the punk band, the 45s, and the originator of the all-female group, the Zellots, Haley’s edgy style stems, in part, from her days in the Los Angeles underground music scene. Known for pushing boundaries by creatively integrating disciplines, genres and media, Haley published “The Edgewise Café,” one of Canada’s first electronic literary magazines, and ran Visible Verse, a videopoem festival, producing her own renowned videos “Purple Lipstick” and “Dying for the Pleasure.”
Called one of Canada’s “national treasures,” she is the author of the poetry collections: Sideways, Three Blocks West of Wonderland, Skookum Raven and a novel, The Town Slut's Daughter. As AURAL Heather, she also released spoken word CDs, “Princess Nut” and “Surfing Season.” Her work has toured Canada, the US and Europe and appeared in a wide range of periodicals and anthologies, including A Verse Map of Vancouver. Haley currently performs in the indie folk duo The Pluviophiles with Keir Nicoll. Committed to honesty, feeling, craft and a sense of the absurd, she continues to ask all the tough questions “a nice girl’s not supposed to ask.”
Called one of Canada’s “national treasures,” she is the author of the poetry collections: Sideways, Three Blocks West of Wonderland, Skookum Raven and a novel, The Town Slut's Daughter. As AURAL Heather, she also released spoken word CDs, “Princess Nut” and “Surfing Season.” Her work has toured Canada, the US and Europe and appeared in a wide range of periodicals and anthologies, including A Verse Map of Vancouver. Haley currently performs in the indie folk duo The Pluviophiles with Keir Nicoll. Committed to honesty, feeling, craft and a sense of the absurd, she continues to ask all the tough questions “a nice girl’s not supposed to ask.”
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 21, 2015
Heather Haley knows how to rock out on the page. The Town Slut’s Daughter takes you on a shambolic ride that starts in Vancouver's punk scene, goes on a shoestring tour down the West coast and into Mexico, does a desperate and disappointing swing into New York City, a card-shark pit-stop in Vegas, an attempt at a second (third) chance in LA, that ends in a coke-fuelled and abusive relationship.
This novel is not pretty, but then again, it's not supposed to be. It is the story of a strong woman who keeps falling into bad choices she doesn't understand.
From the first page, we are in the thick of the Vancouver punk scene. Fiona is taken by a friend to a bar so scuzzy you wouldn't want see it by the light of day. She's underage, the music is a shock to her system and she feels out of place. That's when the cops swoop in. Like a scene out of an action movie, Fiona makes her escape through an underground passageway, meeting some new friends and firmly planting her feet a new world in the process. This is the place she wants to be.
Fiona is on the run from nowhere B.C. where her mother, Jeanette, can't keep her legs together or her lips away from a drink. Her mostly-absent father brings home scowls, rules and a storm clouds of derision. Fiona had to get out.
We’re taken into the mosh pit as her all-girl band, the Virgin Marries, take their shot at getting somewhere. The exploration of the punk scene is both poignant and funny, from the thrash fests that are concerts, to the long boozy nights of fully decked out punks spewing philosophy and venom.
Gradually, the story shifts from musical aspirations to the challenges of her relationships. We get a bed-side view of Fiona who at one moment is in a man’s arms, the next, a woman’s. The sex scenes become progressively detailed and steamy as her musical dedication wanes. Then she is charmed by Caleb, who promises to help her develop her first solo album. But instead of an album, they create a coke-smeared and abusive relationship. As reader I had to wonder: is she becoming her mother?
Oh, irony: it is her mother’s sickness then death that allow Fiona to escape. In another action-movie sequence her passage out of the world she ran away to, is a race through gauntlets of rioting gangs and cops.
What Haley excels at is style-shifting, from taught emotion-laden snippets -- "Rehearsal. Forever. In a little hole in the ground. We are the damned, thought Fiona, condemned to play our songs over and over and over again" -- to the poetic -- "She tries to touch colour, she tries to kiss truth." The swoops of head-banger fiction to the lyrical is smooth, invisible, just as it should be.
There is a stream-of-consciousness feel to this narrative. You are placed quite firmly in the thick of Fiona’s world, even if we aren’t given a wide glimpse of her emotional world. But that’s a quibble.
This is a novel that is all woman, knife-edge sharp, standing up tall and spitting you in the face with defiance. If you’re into punk rock fiction, it’s an absolute must.
This novel is not pretty, but then again, it's not supposed to be. It is the story of a strong woman who keeps falling into bad choices she doesn't understand.
From the first page, we are in the thick of the Vancouver punk scene. Fiona is taken by a friend to a bar so scuzzy you wouldn't want see it by the light of day. She's underage, the music is a shock to her system and she feels out of place. That's when the cops swoop in. Like a scene out of an action movie, Fiona makes her escape through an underground passageway, meeting some new friends and firmly planting her feet a new world in the process. This is the place she wants to be.
Fiona is on the run from nowhere B.C. where her mother, Jeanette, can't keep her legs together or her lips away from a drink. Her mostly-absent father brings home scowls, rules and a storm clouds of derision. Fiona had to get out.
We’re taken into the mosh pit as her all-girl band, the Virgin Marries, take their shot at getting somewhere. The exploration of the punk scene is both poignant and funny, from the thrash fests that are concerts, to the long boozy nights of fully decked out punks spewing philosophy and venom.
Gradually, the story shifts from musical aspirations to the challenges of her relationships. We get a bed-side view of Fiona who at one moment is in a man’s arms, the next, a woman’s. The sex scenes become progressively detailed and steamy as her musical dedication wanes. Then she is charmed by Caleb, who promises to help her develop her first solo album. But instead of an album, they create a coke-smeared and abusive relationship. As reader I had to wonder: is she becoming her mother?
Oh, irony: it is her mother’s sickness then death that allow Fiona to escape. In another action-movie sequence her passage out of the world she ran away to, is a race through gauntlets of rioting gangs and cops.
What Haley excels at is style-shifting, from taught emotion-laden snippets -- "Rehearsal. Forever. In a little hole in the ground. We are the damned, thought Fiona, condemned to play our songs over and over and over again" -- to the poetic -- "She tries to touch colour, she tries to kiss truth." The swoops of head-banger fiction to the lyrical is smooth, invisible, just as it should be.
There is a stream-of-consciousness feel to this narrative. You are placed quite firmly in the thick of Fiona’s world, even if we aren’t given a wide glimpse of her emotional world. But that’s a quibble.
This is a novel that is all woman, knife-edge sharp, standing up tall and spitting you in the face with defiance. If you’re into punk rock fiction, it’s an absolute must.
October 28, 2014
A rollicking tale of sex drugs and rock and roll, though maybe not in that order. In fact much like the early punk part of the book, maybe all three at the same time, or various combinations at least. It may be a fiction, but the great details of the early Vancouver punk scene play out in a very cinematic way. From Vancouver to LA, to NYC, to Vegas, La, again, and finally back to BC, Our hero Fiona lives the real rock and roll lifestyle, learning how hard it can be to escape yourself, let alone the people you become entangled with. Hard hitting, graphic, and at the same time, still with wit and wisdom. Great Job Heather!
June 23, 2015
I WAS ALERTED TO THIS BOOK BY A FRIEND WHO POSTED IT ON FACEBOOK. I was won over by the cool graphics of the cover and too intrigued by the blurb to let it go! Well, I was in for a wild ride.
In fact I couldn't put The Town Slut’s Daughter down. At first it just took me back to my youth and let me wallow in nostalgia for teenage angst and the sheer joy of discovering rock and roll, which was great for a bit but then it wisely moved forward, to become a gripping story. We follow the engaging heroine, Fiona, the titular “Town Slut’s Daughter” through her struggle for rock stardom and quest for personal happiness, delivered in a clear-eyed, unsentimental, uncompromising yet entertaining way. It’s actually a work of “faction” – real people appear in the story, though Fiona herself is a fictional creation. The story encompasses social realism – like Fiona’s life on the edge in pre-boom New York City, or her ordeal of being trapped in the LA riots - together with more reflective musing on sexuality and expatriate life that rings of honest authorial experience filtered through creative imagination and literary talent.
Author Heather Haley reveals the intricacies of the female experience without apology, illusion or blether. The Town Slut’s Daughter isn’t a worthy work of “literary fiction.” It’s too entertaining for that, too anarchic, too direct and too bold - yet it is indeed a work of literary artistry. It can sit comfortably on the shelf with recent full-frontal girl-rock autobiographies by Viv Albertine, Kim Gordon, Patti Smith and Cherie Currie as a fully real account of the music business from a woman’s perspective real life, but with the added layer of fictive imagination that former music critic Haley brings to the mix.
Bravo. I hope it does really well. I haven't read a novel in too long, and I'm so glad I read this one!
In fact I couldn't put The Town Slut’s Daughter down. At first it just took me back to my youth and let me wallow in nostalgia for teenage angst and the sheer joy of discovering rock and roll, which was great for a bit but then it wisely moved forward, to become a gripping story. We follow the engaging heroine, Fiona, the titular “Town Slut’s Daughter” through her struggle for rock stardom and quest for personal happiness, delivered in a clear-eyed, unsentimental, uncompromising yet entertaining way. It’s actually a work of “faction” – real people appear in the story, though Fiona herself is a fictional creation. The story encompasses social realism – like Fiona’s life on the edge in pre-boom New York City, or her ordeal of being trapped in the LA riots - together with more reflective musing on sexuality and expatriate life that rings of honest authorial experience filtered through creative imagination and literary talent.
Author Heather Haley reveals the intricacies of the female experience without apology, illusion or blether. The Town Slut’s Daughter isn’t a worthy work of “literary fiction.” It’s too entertaining for that, too anarchic, too direct and too bold - yet it is indeed a work of literary artistry. It can sit comfortably on the shelf with recent full-frontal girl-rock autobiographies by Viv Albertine, Kim Gordon, Patti Smith and Cherie Currie as a fully real account of the music business from a woman’s perspective real life, but with the added layer of fictive imagination that former music critic Haley brings to the mix.
Bravo. I hope it does really well. I haven't read a novel in too long, and I'm so glad I read this one!
July 29, 2015
The Town Slut's Daughter gets off to a rollicking start. Through the eyes of the titular heroine, punk neophyte Fiona Larochelle, we are tossed, as if in to a mosh pit, right in to the propulsive and exhilarating energy of a DOA show. Haley describes the band in vivid detail, every sweat, growl, shimmy and guitar lick. I was transported back to my own twenty something days as a punk rocker. Haley hits all the right notes, immersing us in to the world of the Vancouver punk scene believably and realistically.
While it was tempting to wallow in my own music memories vicariously via Haley's deft prose stylings, it would do the novel a disservice. There is more at play here than a walk down musical memory lane. The Town Slut's Daughter is about the evolution of a young woman in to an artist. There are few portraits of women artists rendered in such fascinating detail with all the vulnerabilities, pitfalls, tragedies and triumphs intact. Fiona is flawed - she is sometimes imperious, often makes bad choices, but as a reader I never stopped rooting for her.
Fiona is also deeply passionate and Town Slut's Daughter crackles with eroticism but the sex is never gratuitous or exploitive, but dear reader, it is titillating (and this reader isn't complaining). Whew, is it hot in here?
I think Town Slut's Daughter would make a terrific companion piece to Richard Hell's "I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp". It is a rare pleasure to see the evolution of an artist from a woman's point of view. Haley's novel is alternately evocative, thrilling, heartwarming and heartrending. And those of you who were part of the punk scene in the seventies and beyond should make it essential reading. But heck, everyone else should read it too!
While it was tempting to wallow in my own music memories vicariously via Haley's deft prose stylings, it would do the novel a disservice. There is more at play here than a walk down musical memory lane. The Town Slut's Daughter is about the evolution of a young woman in to an artist. There are few portraits of women artists rendered in such fascinating detail with all the vulnerabilities, pitfalls, tragedies and triumphs intact. Fiona is flawed - she is sometimes imperious, often makes bad choices, but as a reader I never stopped rooting for her.
Fiona is also deeply passionate and Town Slut's Daughter crackles with eroticism but the sex is never gratuitous or exploitive, but dear reader, it is titillating (and this reader isn't complaining). Whew, is it hot in here?
I think Town Slut's Daughter would make a terrific companion piece to Richard Hell's "I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp". It is a rare pleasure to see the evolution of an artist from a woman's point of view. Haley's novel is alternately evocative, thrilling, heartwarming and heartrending. And those of you who were part of the punk scene in the seventies and beyond should make it essential reading. But heck, everyone else should read it too!
May 14, 2015
Goodreads Win
It is a tale of a small town Canadian girl moving to Vancouver to live her dreams of playing music but along the way she gets distracted by drugs and a needy husband.
Fiona Larochelle goes to Vancouver to form an all girl punk band as she writes songs for her band Virgin Marries. The group ends up breaking up in New York as she ends up stranded there. She tries to rebuild her dream despite the drug abuse, jealous lovers and producers.
What fueled her success the first time around will not help her this time around. That she cannot continue her lifestyle of being a cocaine addict like her husband as she knows she must leave him and his lifestyle in order to survive.
This is a look at the seedier parts of the lifestyle of music and the darkness it can engulf you. How it can quickly overtake your life in a blink of an eye.
It is a tale of a small town Canadian girl moving to Vancouver to live her dreams of playing music but along the way she gets distracted by drugs and a needy husband.
Fiona Larochelle goes to Vancouver to form an all girl punk band as she writes songs for her band Virgin Marries. The group ends up breaking up in New York as she ends up stranded there. She tries to rebuild her dream despite the drug abuse, jealous lovers and producers.
What fueled her success the first time around will not help her this time around. That she cannot continue her lifestyle of being a cocaine addict like her husband as she knows she must leave him and his lifestyle in order to survive.
This is a look at the seedier parts of the lifestyle of music and the darkness it can engulf you. How it can quickly overtake your life in a blink of an eye.
February 23, 2017
I couldn't put this book down it was so good!
May 21, 2016
This is a gritty, raw, and insightful portrait of the burgeoning punk rock scene back in the day. All the mentions of the legends: Joe Strummer and the like brought back a flood of memories from my own life as a fan of this kind of music. It's a fast-paced read--much more action-packed than I anticipated, and ends with the raucous and reckless bang a story like this should. If you're looking for an unflinching look into some of the harsher moments of the world of music, this is a good read.
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March 6, 2016A pretty interesting read. What a crazy life Fiona leads in this book. I enjoyed the story.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews