Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather ONeill
Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather ONeill
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Lullabies for Little Criminals

Author: Heather O'Neill

Narrator: Patricia Rodriguez

Abridged: 4 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: riverrun

Published: 07/01/2011

Synopsis

Baby is twelve years old. Her mother died not long after she was born and she lives in a string of seedy flats in Montreal's red light district with her father Jules, who takes better care of his heroin addiction than he does of his daughter. Jules is an intermittent presence and a constant source of chaos in Baby's life - the turmoil he brings with him and the wreckage he leaves in his wake. Baby finds herself constantly re-adjusting to new situations, new foster homes, new places, new people, all the while longing for stability and a 'normal' life.
But Baby has a gift - the ability to find the good in people, a genius for spinning stories and for cherishing the small crumbs of happiness that fall into her lap. She is bright, smart, funny and observant about life on the dirty streets of a city and wise enough to realise salvation rests in her own hands.
(P)2008 Quercus Editions Ltd

About Heather O'Neill

Heather O'Neill is a novelist, poet, short-story writer, screenwriter, and essayist. Lullabies for Little Criminals, her debut novel, was published in 2007 to international critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her second novel, The Girl who was Saturday Night, was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Fiction Prize, and shortlisted for the Giller Prize, as was her collection of short stories, Daydreams of Angels. Her third novel, The Lonely Hearts Hotel was longlisted for the Baileys prize. Born and raised in Montreal, O'Neill lives there today with her daughter.

Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on July 11, 2018

don't make your books look like chick lit if you want people to read 'em. more free advice from me. but it's true - not all of us have a sarah montambo in our lives to tell us, "no, this is really very good." because it is. and this is not just me groping all the canadian books in the corner of the da......more

Goodreads review by Kim on September 06, 2009

Damn. This book just about broke my heart. It wormed its way in and split me three ways---three different identities rubbernecking in the lives of Jules and Baby. The story is seen through the eyes of Baby, a 12 yr old who lives with her Dad in Montreal. Her Mom died when she was one and Jules, well......more

Goodreads review by Kara on February 07, 2017

Second Review: January 26, 2016 Wow, did I ever write more concise reviews in 2008! In that spirit, I don’t have much to add after this second reading. I’m teaching this to my Grade 12 English class of adult Aboriginal learners. We spend a lot of time reading texts by/about Indigenous people and issue......more

Goodreads review by Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) on October 23, 2020

"A child's mind is like a bird trapped in an attic, looking for any crack of the light to fly out of. Children are given vivid imaginations as defense mechanisms, as they usually don't have much means for escape." Heather O'Neill, you are a magnificent gutter angel and I love you with all my heart. H......more

Goodreads review by Baba on March 19, 2021

O'Neill's Orange Prize shortlisted gem. Lullabies tells the story of about 15 months in the life of a 12 year old girl, called Baby(!), who's sole parent is a young Heroin addict, living in the Red Light district of Montreal. What O'Neill manages to do is capture the cold dark but oft amazing world......more

Quotes

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

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