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True Confessions of a Heartless Girl

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Here is the quote that begins "True Confessions of a Heartless Girl":

"The American novelist John Gardner, I think it was, said there are, really, only two plot lines: a stranger rides into town, and a stranger rides out of town", - William Least Heat-Moon "PrairyErth".

This book begins with the former. In it, seventeen-year-old Noreen Stall has arrived at the M.T. Café in a stolen truck, her pockets full of stolen money, and a baby growing in her womb. She has arrived in a small Canadian town in the middle of nowhere without direction or hope. Winner of the 2002 Governor General's Literary Award (think of it as the Canadian Newbery), this book is one of the most quietly moving pieces of young adult literature I have ever read.

Author Martha Brooks has created a small stirring story. Individual characters meet and mix with Noreen, showing their own private sorrows and disappointments in life. The girl herself seems to attract nothing but bad luck and trouble, and it's difficult to see how exactly she's going to change her life around.

This is not a story where everything slowly gets better and better for Noreen until, at the end, she's bursting with enough joy and happiness to fill her days. It's subtler than that. More realistic. And filled with beautiful well-thought out characters. Following in a long line of stories in which a single girl finds herself surrounded by occasionally understanding people, this book is nothing so much as an older version of "The Great Gilly Hopkins".

Moralistic parents beware. This story does contain a fair amount of swearing (though I was amused by the Canadian/British bad word "bugger" showing up as well) in addition to discussions of abortion and miscarriages. And I don't know how interesting this book is to kids and teens. After all, much of this story concentrates on the thoughts and emotions of the middle-aged and elderly. Not typical YA fare. But for any teen that is looking for a book that shows real problems without becoming didactic, preachy, or condescending, this story is ideal. There are no easy answers. Noreen isn't going to be saved by the kindness of strangers. This book deals with the truth and its ending is satisfactory in the extreme.

But I shouldn't have been. Martha Brooks is a wonderful author, and this book lives up to the high standard set by BONE DANCE.

I often have trouble sympathizing with characters like Noreen, who I sometimes find annoying. But this story drew me in completely and made me care about what happened to everyone. The characters of the elderly women were excellent additions to - it's not every day you find perspective like that in a YA novel.

I like bittersweet endings.

Even when Noreen Stall has the best intentions, it seems that she screws everything up. And when she makes so many mistakes that she starts to hate herself, she runs from the people who love her. When she runs away from her boyfriend, taking his truck, money and unborn baby, she finds herself in the small town of Pembina Lake. There she lands in the rundown café owned by Lynda Bradley, a single mother of a three-year-old boy, Seth. Lynda is struggling to make sense of a life that could have been so much more. She lets Noreen stay the night and, in doing so, unleashes a series of events that force the people in the town to take a look at their own lives.

When Dolores Harper, who has a gift for helping people, hears about Noreen, she decides to get her to talk. But while she is helping Noreen open up, she can't see that her "oldest friend in the world" might need her support as well. During her stay at Pembina Lake, Noreen makes many more mistakes, including accidentally poisoning Seth's beloved dog and ripping out part of the wall in the café while trying to remove the fading, ugly wallpaper. Will she run again, or decide to stay?

The characters you meet in this book are real and unforgettable. Watching them help each other along gave me a satisfying feeling.

--- Reviewed by Briana Orr

As I read this book in one sitting, I couldn't help think that this seemed to be more of an adult book than any of Martha Brooks other novels. Perhaps it was the many adults that surrounded the main character. In most young adult books the teenaged main character is surrounded by her peers, but in this book, it is mostly adults who help her to reveal her pain and to make a new life. Rather than be on the sidelines, the adults are front and center and we learn about their own sometimes unhappy lives.This is a good book for teenagers and their parents to share. A quick read with substance.
Try Martha Brooks' other books as well.

This book was heartwarming and the main character, if sometimes annoying with her "heartless" behavior, is likable. Besides Noreen though, the author has interesting, 3D suporting characters: Wesley Cuthand, Noreen's boyfriend, and the many inhabitants of the town Noreen stumbles upon at the beginning of the book.
Very much like Where The Heart Is, this book is about a stranger who walks into town one day, and changes the lives of the people who live there.

Noreen is a seventeen year old girl who has had a rough beginning in life. Her mother, whom she calls "Amazing," is quite the opposite, and her step-father, whom she calls "Stupid-head," is exactly that. Noreen moves out to live with her step-sister Gladys and her husband to get away from her home-life. In True Confessions of a Heartless Girl, Martha Brooks tells of one girl's struggle for acceptance and a place in the world.
One evening while Noreen is walking along the highway after leaving her most recent boyfriend, Wesley, a truck driver, picks her up. He falls in love with her immediately. After spending a few nights in a hotel room together, Wesley and Noreen go tell Gladys, who has been worried about Noreen's whereabouts for days, that they are moving in together.
Noreen carries on a boring life with Wesley. He goes to work and comes home while she basically stays in bed all day. One day she finds a coffee can full of money and decides to clean up the house. Noreen begins to spend Wesley's money and when he finds out, he is furious. The next day Noreen takes the rest of the money, her belongings, and Wesley's truck and leaves.
She drives through a storm and ends up in a small Canadian town. She walks into a café and all of her problems come out. The owner of the café takes Noreen under her wing and tries to help her. Noreen ends up nearly killing their dog, setting fire to her temporary living quarters, and tearing down a wall in the café. Through all of this she finds out that she is pregnant with Wesley's child. Once again Noreen picks up her belongings and disappears. Only this time she comes back.
The book takes the reader through the mind of a troubled teen who is struggling to grow up. It also reveals the troubles from the past that many older adults deal with. Together Noreen and the people she meets at the café help each other out. It also shows the true power of love and friendship.
Brooks writes the novel freely which makes it an easy read. It holds the reader's attention, and tells a powerful story at the same time. She reveals many of life's hard-learned lessons through the encounter of total strangers. This is an entertaining and influential book for early teens through adults.

Trouble is a typical event in 17-year-old Noreen Stall's life. After a terrible childhood and bitter relationships with her family, she's had trouble with her boyfriend, Wesley. Desperate, she cold-heartedly steals his truck and money, discovers she's pregnant, and lands in the small town of Pembina Lake. In this small town, filled with adults with sorrows of their own, Noreen slowly moves past her hatred and hidden sorrow.

After reading this book's jacket, I was convinced that I would love it. "True Confessions of a Heartless Girl" appeared to be the type of book that would have intriguing characters and be insightfully written yet effortlessly readable.

Well, it wasn't.

Initially, the book is promising, as it is filled with quick and riveting descriptions of Noreen during her childhood and her time with Wesley. But once Noreen actually arrives in Pembina, the plot slows so much and becomes somehow so sparse that it was hard to read more than ten pages of the book at a time. The events were painfully and almost artificially "normal" and dialogue can only be called run-of-the-mill. Brooks also has a habit of drably describing all of the characters' mundane activities (like coloring with crayons) and all of the town's scenery that becomes more aggravating with each chapter.

The "subtle" writing style (if we must be polite and call it that) is made worse by that fact that the story is, well, cliche. There are so many young adult books explore similar themes-teen preganacy, the effects of a bad childhood, and how a stranger can change people's lives-that another one is unnecessary unless it is actually compelling.

It is impossible to imagine why this book won such praise in Canada. A few well-done passages do nothing to hide the fact that this book is as bleak and colorless as Noreen is heartless. Instead of this book, try Sharon Creech's "Walk Two Moons" or Margaret Wild's "One Night."

Noreen, who is seventeen and newly-pregnant, is a human demolition derby who has stolen her latest boyfriend's money and truck. Running away from her latest disaster, she finds herself in the small prairie town of Pembina Lake. There she becomes the catalyst for change among all the story's other impeccably drawn characters, ranging from five year-old Seth to septuagenarian Dolores. The old café in town where newly-arrived Noreen takes shelter from the storm is symbolic of the characters in Pembina Lake--they too are going to rot away and collapse if this obnoxious teenager doesn't tear at their edges as she does with the café wallpaper.

This is a remarkable story with just a couple of settings, amazing dialogue, and portraits of a small town that frequently made me shiver the way I did when first reading Steinbeck's 1930's descriptions of Salinas.

A little over two years ago I came across this book. At the time I thought it had been published just recently, but I realized later it was originally published in Canada in 2002 and then a little over a year later in the U.S. I can't even remember now how I first heard about TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A HEARTLESS GIRL. But I remember that the fact that it was set in Canada and written by a Canadian was part of the draw. That and the intriguing storyline. I'm mystified as to why we seem to rarely get wind of some of these gems from our northern neighbors. HEARTLESS GIRL was the winner of the 2002 Governor General's Literary Award and if this is any indication of the quality of the winners of that award, I will be paying attention to future winners and nominations. None of our local bookstores had it in, but my library did (bless them) so I picked it up on my way home from work and read it later that night as my husband snored gently beside me. One thing is for sure--I fell irretrievably into Martha Brooks' clear, evocative prose.

Set in present-day Manitoba, the story follows self-proclaimed heartless girl Noreen. World-weary at 17, pregnant and on the run from her boyfriend Wesley (the first kind boy she's ever been with), Noreen steals his truck and his cash and winds up broke and alone in a small farming town not far from Brandon. Against her better judgement, Lynda (the operator of the local cafe) takes Noreen in and gives her a job. And thus she unwittingly unleashes a storm the likes of which the denizens of this small town have never seen. Each of them carry their own burdens. Lynda herself has escaped an abusive relationship and is raising her three-year-old son Seth on her own, while managing to run the cafe. Dolores Harper, the local wise woman, shows up sporting her "Meddling for Jesus" sweatshirt, ready to help the new girl open up. And Del Armstrong, the resident middle-aged bachelor, does his best to help Noreen, all the while unable to forgive himself for the tragedy that occurred the year he was her age. But will any of them be able to see beyond their own personal issues to save each other from their demons?

TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A HEARTLESS GIRL ought to be swallowed in one satisfying session, I think. The writing is spare but weighty. Brooks' words leave a mark on you long after your eyes move past them on the page. We get the story from the perspective of Noreen, Wesley, and several of the inhabitants of Pembina Lake--the small town of Noreen finds herself unable to leave. I loved the characters with their strengths and weaknesses, all of them prominently on display. Noreen isunbearably heartless at times. She is also sensitive and imaginative and capable of love. But where she walks, trouble follows. Everyone she comes into contact with meets with disaster as some point in the tale. But somehow they're unable to just wash their hands of this girl and let her go. Despite their own numerous personal issues, the people there take her in, feed her, give her work, and just try (sometimes against all reason) to help this girl whose life has been seemingly cursed since the day she was born. And then there's Wesley. The Cree construction worker with a sky full of stars and careful hands. I liked that he didn't let Noreen trample him underfoot. I liked that he yelled and stomped and left when he should. I get tired sometimes of the Tireless Good Guy. The one who's always there and comes back even when she doesn't deserve him. On the contrary, these two find their way back to each other only when their eyes can see clearly again. When Noreen learns how to stay still and not run. The vastness of the prairie is in this slim novel. It is exquisite and I love it.

Everybody has secrets and obstacles they have to cross. Pembina Lake just seems to attract people with hidden pasts that seem unreal to the people around them. Noreen is a troubled young woman who runs away from her apartment where she lived with her boyfriend Wesley. She ends up in a small café there owned by Lynda, a widower with a son named Del. Throughout the story Noreen has to deal with countless hard times, such as a family who was never there for her, becoming pregnant and losing her child, and ruining the restaurant. I would indeed recommend this book. It toys with your emotions and has a very good plot. At times it can be confusing however. It would be better if things were more clear and drawn out. I would recommend this book to anyone between the ages of 13 to 17 due to a more mature writing style and the context of the novel. Read as you discover the exciting rise and fall of Noreen.