Lullabies for Little Criminals - Softcover
Baby is twelve. Her mother died soon after she was born so she lives with her father - and his heroin addiction. She's grown up in Montreal' red-light district, never staying anywhere long enough to call it home, and now Baby is losing the only constant in her life; her father. He's been sent to hospital and she's been forced into foster care. She longs for his return; other people's families are no substitute for her own. Starved of affection, Baby is attracted to all the wrong people. And when her father betrays her and she is sent to a juvenile detention centre, she is more at risk than ever. Baby' survival rests on her gift for spinning stories and for cherishing the small crumbs of happiness which fall into her lap. Poised on the threshold between childhood and adult life, she is bright, funny, observant and ultimately wise enough to realize that salvation rests in her hands alone.Heather O'Neill' talent is outstanding, she is able to craft the most beautiful images and "Quercus" anticipates a remarkable future for her.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Told with shafts of wit and a lightness of touch which few novels on such themes achieve. Baby, like Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye, is totally believable. Although few people suffer a childhood like hers, everyone can identify with her feelings, on the threshold of adolescence longing for stability and recognition (Times Literary Supplement)
From feisty little Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird to Sissy Spacek's blank-eyed Holly in the film Badlands, Heather O'Neill draws on the annals of knowing child narrators to shape Baby's shabby, scrappy scrabble from broken home to detention centre to pimp's lap and back again. Scabrous humour and brutal insight fairly jolt each episode into life (Observer)
Vivid and poignant . . . O'Neill's novel builds to a riveting climax . . . deeply moving (Independent)
O'Neill bombards the reader with piercing observations and magical imagery . . . Her story is bleak, yet not bitter; full of pathos, spirit and, overwhelmingly, an iridescent innocence (Independent on Sunday)
O'Neill's vivid prose owes a debt to Donna Tartt's The Little Friend. Baby's precocious introspection feels pitch perfect. Tear-jerkingly effective (Publishers Weekly)
Dreamy prose . . . Baby's unique voice and the glimmer of hope provided by her intelligence and imaginative spirit live on in the mind long after you have closed the book (Waterstones Book Quarterly)
Heather O'Neill's style is laced with so much sublime possibility and merciless actuality that it makes me think of comets and live wires (Helen Oyeyemi)
...dreamy prose...Baby's unique voice and the glimmer of hope provided by her intelligence and imaginative spirit live on in the mind long after you have closed the book - Waterstones Books Quarterly (Waterstone's Books Quarterly)
...vivid and poignant...a deeply moving and troubling novel - Independent (Independent)
O'Neill's vivid prose owes a debt to Donna Tartt's The Little Friend...Baby's precocious introspection feels pitch perfect...Tear-jerkingly effective - Publishers Weekly (Publisher's Weekly)
From the Publisher:
From feisty little Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird to Sissy Spacek's blank-eyed Holly in the film Badlands, Heather O'Neill draws on the annals of knowing child narrators to shape Baby's shabby, scrappy scrabble from broken home to detention centre to pimp's lap and back again. Scabrous humour and brutal insight fairly jolt each episode into life (Observer)
Vivid and poignant . . . O'Neill's novel builds to a riveting climax . . . deeply moving (Independent)
O'Neill bombards the reader with piercing observations and magical imagery . . . Her story is bleak, yet not bitter; full of pathos, spirit and, overwhelmingly, an iridescent innocence (Independent on Sunday)
O'Neill's vivid prose owes a debt to Donna Tartt's The Little Friend. Baby's precocious introspection feels pitch perfect. Tear-jerkingly effective (Publishers Weekly)
Dreamy prose . . . Baby's unique voice and the glimmer of hope provided by her intelligence and imaginative spirit live on in the mind long after you have closed the book (Waterstones Book Quarterly)
Heather O'Neill's style is laced with so much sublime possibility and merciless actuality that it makes me think of comets and live wires (Helen Oyeyemi)
...dreamy prose...Baby's unique voice and the glimmer of hope provided by her intelligence and imaginative spirit live on in the mind long after you have closed the book - Waterstones Books Quarterly (Waterstone's Books Quarterly)
...vivid and poignant...a deeply moving and troubling novel - Independent (Independent)
O'Neill's vivid prose owes a debt to Donna Tartt's The Little Friend...Baby's precocious introspection feels pitch perfect...Tear-jerkingly effective - Publishers Weekly (Publisher's Weekly)
Shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherQuercus Publishing
- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 1847242332
- ISBN 13 9781847242334
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages384
- Rating
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Lullabies for Little Criminals
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