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    Lullabies for Little Criminals: A Novel
    Lullabies for Little Criminals: A Novel
    Lullabies for Little Criminals: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Lullabies for Little Criminals: A Novel

    Written by Heather O'Neill

    Narrated by Heather O'Neill and Miriam McDonald

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    “A beautiful book. . . . There are phrases in here that will make you laugh out loud, and others that will stop your heart. A definite triumph.” — David Rakoff, author of Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish

    The international bestseller by Heather O'Neill, the Giller-shortlisted author of Daydreams of Angels and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night. A blend of Girl, Interrupted and Thirteen, Lullabies for Little Criminals is a heartbreaking and wholly original novel about a young girl fighting to preserve a bruised innocence on the feral streets of a big city

    Baby, all of thirteen years old, is lost in the gangly, coltish moment between childhood and the strange pulls and temptations of the adult world. Her mother is dead; her father Jules is always on the lookout for his next score. Baby knows that “chocolate milk” is Jules’ slang for heroin and sees a lot more of that in her house than the real article. But she takes vivid delight in the scrappy bits of happiness and beauty that find their way to her, and moves through the threat of the streets as if she’s been choreographed in a dance.

    Soon, though, a hazard emerges that is bigger than even her hard-won survival skills can handle. Alphonse, the local pimp, has his eye on her for his new girl; he wants her body and soul—and what the johns don’t take he covets for himself. At the same time, a tender and naively passionate friendship unfolds with a boy from her class at school, who has no notion of the dark claims on her—which even her father, lost on the nod, cannot totally ignore. Jules consigns her to a stint in juvie hall, and for the moment this perceived betrayal preserves Baby from terrible harm—but after that, her salvation has to be her own invention.

    Channeling the artlessly affecting voice of her thirteen-year-old heroine with extraordinary accuracy and power, O’Neill’s dazzles with a novel of extraordinary prescience and power, a subtly understated yet searingly effective story of a young life on the streets—and the strength, wits, and luck necessary for survival.

    Channeling the artlessly affecting voice of her thirteen-year-old heroine with extraordinary accuracy and power, Heather O’Neill’s heartbreaking and wholly original debut novel blew readers away when it was first published ten years ago. Now in a new deluxe package it is sure to capture its next decade of readers as Baby picks her pathway along the edge of the abyss to arrive at a place of redemption, and of love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9780062571465
    Author

    Heather O'Neill

    HEATHER O’NEILL is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her most recent novel, When We Lost Our Heads, was a #1 national bestseller and a finalist for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. Her previous works include The Lonely Hearts Hotel, which won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and CBC’s Canada Reads, as well as Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and Daydreams of Angels, which were shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize two years in a row. O’Neill has also won CBC’s Canada Reads and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, she lives there today.

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    Reviews for Lullabies for Little Criminals

    4/5

    557 ratings45 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A gritty but emotionally honest account of girl's life in the rough streets of a Montreal ghetto. A young girl is raised by a loving but mentally-ill and heroin-addicted teen father. Baby sees and experiences this life with the odd innocence of those who know no different. She is street-wise but needy, makes bad choices including prostitution, yet never falls into self-pity. The key appeal of this book is that Baby makes her choices, good and bad, and SHE deals with the repercussions in the best way she knows. (Thank God, most of us were/are never faced with either her limited choices or her solutions!) The author manages to make this tough young girl's strengths and failings totally understandable so that one can't help but be sympathetic and root for her throughout. She is smart. She strives. And she never gives up. Powerful and inspiring . Attitude is all. And it is this that saves her in the end. If you ever thought your life was just too hard, Baby will remind that there are people who have had it a lot worse who manage not just to strive but, in the end, thrive! Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Heartbreaking and funny and sometimes so painful to read that I’d have to set it aside for days because I just couldn’t bear what was surely going to happen next. I sobbed through the last chapter, but it’s ultimately a hopeful book after all.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book so much I couldn't put it down. I alternated between laughing and crying at all the sorrow and beauty through Baby's eyes.
    • 5/5
      A CBC "Canada Reads" selection, this tale of a young girl being raised by her drug-addicted father and living by her wits in East-end Montreal is a scary, heartbreaking, beautiful read. A times funny, at times frightening, at times uplifting, sometimes so sad, this book is never boring! I was casting the movie as I read the book!
    • 4/5
      Beautiful and disturbing in equal measure.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Baby, 12 years old at the start of the book and barely 14 at the end of it. Her father and mother were only 15 when she was born and her mother died when Baby was a baby. Her young father has been raising her alone in Montreal and he is coping with illness (TB) and drug addiction (heroin) himself. So Baby is left to her own devices much more than she should be. She spends some time in a foster home and some more time in juvenile detention. Although she is an honour student she is put into a slow learners' class when she gets out of juvie. Her father goes to rehab and kicks his habit but backslides and can't or won't look after Baby. She starts turning tricks for a pimp who is nice to her. Even at this stage Baby continues to go to school and even has a boyfriend from a nice middle-class family. Just when you think things might work out for her, her father locks her out and the only place she has to go is the pimp. To make matters worse, Baby starts using heroin. This is her explanation for why she started using: I never thought I would end up doing heroin. I don't think I did it because of Jules. I think we both did it for the same reason, though: because we were both fools who were too fragile to be sad, and because no one was prepared to give us a good enough reason not to do it. Not wanting to spoil the ending I can't give any more details but the short section dealing with Baby on heroin is some of the most devastating prose I have read. I gather from the P.S. section at the back of the book that the author knew something of the life she gave to Baby but I don't know if heroin played a part. If it did then this book is a miracle because that's what it would take for a heroin addict to escape the life and write so excellently. If it didn't then O'Neill has, I believe, caught the essence of that addiction and if it stops just one person from becoming addicted then that would be a miracle. I hope O'Neill can produce more fine literature because I want to read it.
    • 4/5
      Baby is 11-13 years old during the events in the book, and her dad, Jules, has raised her since her mom died when she was 16 (both her parents were 15 when Baby was born). Although Jules does seem to love Baby, and they have fun together, he does a lot of drugs, so there are times when Baby is moved into foster care. She's a smart girl and she tries to be good, but as she gets older, she manages to get into more and more scrapes, including befriending a local pimp.This was really good. It's sad (but easy) to see how a good kid could get into trouble, with a neglectful parent who is more concerned about himself and getting high. You could see Baby trying to be good, and wanting to do normal "kid" stuff, but at the same time, she's pulled into an adult world. Very good book.
    • 5/5
      Lullabies for Little Criminals is a hard-hitting story about Baby, a 12 year old girl being brought up by her young father who is in poor health, is fairly uneducated and is a drug addict. Despite his best intentions and a love of sorts for the child, his immaturity, ignorance and lack of opportunities make him wholly unfit for the job of parenting and for providing for a family.Although she is a child with great intellect and potential, we witness firsthand the spiralling, destructive impact that Baby's broken home environment has on her young life. It is an all too real story of the repercussions of neglect and abject poverty.Whilst there are numerous fictional novels set in a similar environment, O'Neill achieves something special in this novel. Told in the first person by Baby, we experience the story both through Baby's eyes and through our own eyes as an adult reader. As a reader we see the smaller forks in the road and the inevitable bigger picture road to ruin that they lead to, yet in parallel we experience what it is like to be inside the head of that 12 year old, and why those decisions seem like the right ones at the time. Heather O'Neill does an amazing job of authenticating that juvenile thought process. She was brought up in a similarly impoverished neighbourhood, and manages to develop this insight to the next level, so accurately understanding the emotional needs and reactions of that age. After reading it I honestly feel like I understand the true cycle of poverty so much better. Despite his total failure as a father, we could understand Baby's dad at times - he undoubtedly loved her, but he had neither the intelligence nor opportunity to pull himself out of that environment. He had no role models, he was emotionally unequipped for the task, he had little resources with which to pull himself out of poverty with, he was mentally unstable from drug addiction, and he knew of no other way of living so felt there was nothing better to strive for.Baby craves all that he cannot give her - stability, consistency, safety, physical affection, boundaries and encouragement. We see through her eyes how children will look for emotional support and connection wherever they can find it. Let down by a proper system of adult support, there is unfortunately no shortage of lowlifes to prey on their vulnerability, and in small steps they stray from the path into the undergrowth.The psychology of this book will stay with me for quite some time - it's not often that I feel like I'm thinking through the head of the main character to such an extent.5 stars - sad, raw and impacting.
    • 5/5
      Baby, 12 when the book begins, is being raised by her heroin addicted young father, Jules. Her teenage mother died in a car wreck soon after Baby's birth. Jules and Baby live on the skids in Montreal, eventually landing in the lowest place possible, the red light district. Baby is a tough, smart little girl. Still, by 13 she is experiencing drugs, sex and prostitution, her adult "boyfriend" her pimp. She loves Jules and longs for him to become the parent she needs. Jules loves Baby too and comes out of his fog long enough to understand she needs a savior and he has to find a way to become one. This is a riveting book. The author apparently lived Baby's life and has chosen to write about her childhood in fiction rather than nonfiction. She does so brilliantly.
    • 5/5
      Reading this book really opens your eyes because it shows a lifestyle that many of us have never experienced, and would never dream of experiencing. It follows the story of a twelve year old girl named Baby as she struggles to navigate life, stuck between the realms of childhood and adulthood. She has grown up in a broken home with a heroin addict for a father who takes better care of his addictions than he does her. A figure of authority is absent from her life because her mother is dead, and her father is still rather immature himself. Her life lacks consistency as she regularly moves between different apartments, foster homes, and eventually juvenile detention. Throughout her journey though, there is one constant: her search for love. Along the way, she hits a few speed bumps, and has to make some difficult decisions. Some of them lead to things like alcohol, drugs, and prostitution. Eventually though, she gets to where she needs to be, and her journey is complete.Although she makes plenty of bad choices, the reader doesn't resent her for them because of her spirit. She keeps a good attitude and her sense of humour is always present. Because of her upbringing, it is harder for her to make good decisions, and the reasoning and influences behind her decisions are what cause the reader to develop empathy for her.At one point in the novel, Baby says “From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time.” I found this line to be very heart-wrenching, and I instantly felt sorry for her. I could never imagine living a life where being let down is a reoccurring theme, yet at twelve, this is her reality.Overall, I felt this was a valuable book to read. It exposes you to a different type of lifestyle and makes you more aware of the issues people face in their daily lives. It teaches you to be grateful for what you have, and to see others beyond their stereotypes. Most importantly, it shows us there is good in every situation, even if it takes a while to find it.
    • 5/5
      Baby, a 13 year-old motherless girl with a heroin-addicted father, tells the harrowing, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious story of her life. In her first novel, O'Neill creates a narrator who wavers between adult wisdom, street smarts and wildly innocent naivete. It's a combination that puts her into mortal danger on the streets of Montreal. Although the reader cannot help but see Baby as a victim of her circumstances, there is not a trace of self-pity or sentimentality in her voice -- the voice of a survivor.In an interview at the back of the book, O'Neill describes how her own childhood influenced the writing of the book."An unwanted child is a boogeyman to its relatives, as they have to take responsibility for it. But an unwanted child is a hero on the streets. Being neglected, you have a lot of freedom to develop outlandish, eccentric personalities in order to get love....In Lullabies, I wanted to capture what I remembered of the drunken babbling of unfortunate twelve-year-olds: their illusions; their ludicrously bad choices, the lack of morality and utter disbelief in cause and effect. I wanted to describe the bittersweet relations between children who hate themselves, but are madly in love with and make heroes of one another.Highly recommended.
    • 2/5
      Hum...dunno why, but this book didn't work too well for me. Know what got to me the most? The -constant- similes which, though original and descriptive and all, were, as I said, about two to a (fairly short) paragraph...it just got to be...annoying. Plus the ending. It just sort of stopped, and wound up rather abruptly after meandering through various unfortunate events and circumstances. For all the crazy things that made up the main character, Baby's, life, little seemed to happen, and while I wouldn't call the book 'forgettable,' it failed to be 'memorable.' I guess the reason for the two stars was not boredom, or true dislike, or even that I'd say not to bother, but that it seemed oddly insubstantial once I'd come to the end.
    • 5/5
      Imagine if Scout Finch was a poor, neglected and abused twelve year old living in Montreal, and Atticus was a drug addict - no, I can't either. But that's probably the best way to describe Heather O'Neill's novel, which was a literary slap in the face for me. Baby is a witty, intelligent yet heartbreakingly fragile narrator, so open and engaging that her suffering is all the more painful to read. Yes, I know she and her father are fictional, but the all too real likelihood of kids living lives like hers made me so mad - seems any fool can have children, yet prospective adoptive parents have to jump through legal hoops when applying for the same right.'Love is a big and wonderful idea, but life is made up of small things. As a kid, you have nothing to do with the way the world is run; you just have to hurry to catch up with it.'I also really loved the language of this book, which - like Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird - is both innocent and worldly at the same time. Baby's metaphors are both visually powerful and appropriate, like sky that 'had the feeling of cold, wet underwear on a clothesline', a cough that sounds like 'an umbrella being torn apart by the wind', and 'a voice like someone reading handwritten Valentine cards'. She drew me into her life, and, as I say, I was shocked by her almost inevitable corruption - I wanted to shout, 'She's only twelve, for god's sake!' The ending is hopeful but not improbable, which satisfied me - I'm glad that the author treated Baby's abuse as part of the character and not merely a device to build drama and sympathy. An incredible yet disturbing book, cleverly written.
    • 4/5
      a humorous yet tragic story about growing up in a tough situation. I found it hard to read at times as the "realness" of it was sometimes overwhelming. The characters sprout to life right from the beginning and you might find yourself cheering them on. Recommended but only when you're in the mood for something heavy.
    • 3/5
      So, so beautifully written, but I still found it a bit aimless. I annoyed so many people by saying this that I will give up saying any more....
    • 5/5
      My husband must have thought I was crazy while I was reading this book, as I had tears running down my face one moment and I would burst out laughing the next. The young girl in the story, Baby, did not have a good life but for her it was just the way it was. I have read some articles that Heather O'Neill has written for Chatelaine and I can understand where her inspiration for the story came from.
    • 3/5
      There is a lot of dark and ugly raw material in this book about a young girl from a hopelessly dysfunctional single parent family. She sees her sordid world as the norm, with sadness and loneliness her primary emotions. Author Heather O'Neill very adeptly gets into the delinquent mindset. It's a sad story, but there is hope. Worth the read.
    • 2/5
      While I really wanted to be impressed with Lullabies for Little Criminals, I had to be truthful and tell you that I had had to force myself to keep reading and finish it. Having read the back cover and summary, I thought this would be good for me, because I love heart-breaking books and all. And as I read on, I constantly found it easier to put down. It bored me most of the time. It didn't break my heart at all. The story was slow. And I don't really have much patience with slow-going books, unless they're really good. But this book is not really good. So that's why I put it down for a few days just to pick it up later. It took me a week to finish this book. As for me, I don't have any big problems with the writing. O'Neill's writing is fine, as far as writing goes. I guess what didn't impress me is the whole story. It didn't work for me. I did feel something for Baby, the unfortunate 12-year-old girl in the book, though. Her mother died when she was a baby. She lives with her good-for-nothing father, Jules, who does a lot of drugs. They have to move around a lot. Jules loved Baby when she was younger, but then she comes of age, and he suddenly finds it difficult to love her. He starts to expect the worst of her, blaming her for things that she didn't do, and accusing her of being a whore. Everything she does seems to piss him off. I sympathized with her plight, until she goes and becomes a prostitute and starts to do drugs. I had no sympathy for that. People have choices. To be or not to be, that's the question. And she chose to be, which I found very unreasonable, because it's not like she's desperate. She's happy with what she has, but she does it anyway, and not keeping anything she earns. I don't get this aspect of the book. I mean, why would she destroy herself like that, even with no motives? At first I guessed it was because she wanted to piss Jules off even more by actually being one. But then I thought that it didn't make much sense. Baby doesn't seem to be the kind of person who takes vengeance. So that still remains unclear to me and I'm pretty sure I'm not interested in figuring that out anymore. Anyway. I guess I'd have to say I wasn't very impressed with this book. Do I think reading it was somewhat a torture? Hmmm, yes, actually, though not all the time. If you need something to put to you sleep in any case, this book is for you. It will bore to you sleep. Guaranteed.
    • 3/5
      Baby lives with her father, Jules, a heroin addict. She doesn't remember her mother:He and my mother had both been fifteen when I was born. She had died a year later, so he'd been left to raise me all by himself. It didn't make him any more mature than any other twenty-six-year-old, though. He practically fell on the floor and died when a song he liked came on the radio. He was always telling people that he was color-blind because he thought it made him sound original. He also didn't look too much like a parent ... I thought of him as my best friend, as if we were almost the same age. (p. 4)Jules tries to make a living and support his habit by peddling merchandise at flea markets. To stay one step ahead of their landlord they seem to always be on the move. Baby knows how to fit her entire life into a small suitcase. Despite all these disadvantages, Baby is smart and does well in school. She seems determined to overcome the odds, but her world is turned upside down when Jules goes into rehab, and Baby into the foster care system. Over the next year, Baby moves in and out of care, is placed into a remedial program at school, and gets sucked into the unhealthy lifestyle on the streets of Montreal.Baby narrates her story with an authentic twelve-year-old's voice, and really got on my nerves for the first half of the book. But as her personal hardships intensified, so did my sympathy, and I found myself pulling for her. She was often left on her own for days at a time, and had to grow up far too quickly. I understood why she did what she did, but wished I could influence her choices (I'm avoiding spoilers here).Such a realistic and gritty story should have been "unputdownable." It thought it was an interesting and unique book, but had no problem setting it aside. It may have just been my mood this past week; I still recommend reading this Orange Prize nominee.
    • 4/5
      Baby is an unconventional name for an unconventional girl. Baby lost her mother when she was young, so young that she has no memories of the woman who gave birth to her. All she has is a drug addicted, emotionally unstable, and nomadic father who moves her from one insect infested, tattered walled apartment to the next. Baby's life puts the term poverty to shame as she oscillates between a little girl who craves the love and affection of her absent father, to the young and rebellious teen that one day finds herself with not only a pimp as a boyfriend, but the delusional glamour of being a prostitute. I thought I would be shocked, outraged, or at least indignant at what life doled out for Baby and yet somehow the dysfunctionality that is her normal, somehow seemed normal. It's the idea that if you don't know better, you wouldn't expect or demand better. The world that Baby exists is the only world she knows and like an endangered species, she carves out a niche of her very own. It is by no mean a childhood transition into adulthood that one would desire, but in its own shattered emptiness, there was a faint gleam of redemption. Lullabies for Criminals was not what I expected, but it worked, and the chord it struck can still be heard echoing within me.
    • 4/5
      A child's mind is like a bird trapped in an attic, looking for any crack of light to fly out of. Children are given vivid imaginations as defense mechanisms, as they usually don't have much means for escape.Shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008, O'Neill's debut novel takes the reader into the world of 12-year old Baby. No, that is not a pseudonym. As Baby will tell you, that is the name on her birth certificate. The product of a teenage pregnancy, Baby lives with her young father Jules, who has been raising Baby on his own since her mother's death shortly after Baby was born. We learn right upfront that their relationship is more brother and sister than father and daughter in nature and that their life is somewhat transient - moving from apartment to apartment, resident hotel to resident hotel. Baby's world in Montreal is connected to the world of prostitutes, drug dealers, addicts and pimps, a neighborhood of strip joints and hot dog shops. No white picket fences, chintz curtains and frilly dresses with bows here. With trips into foster care and the custody of a neighbor when Jules is hospitalized and then does a stint in rehab, Baby's life is anything but stable and secure. O'Neill does an amazing job bringing to life the world of a troubled adolescent. Baby's life is such a hard one with an unpredictable and at time abusive father, being misunderstood by the system - who the heck places an honor's student into remedial schooling?!?! - and a victim of the vultures that lurk in society and prey on the young and the weak that was heartbreaking to read. O'Neill manages to balance this depressing story of abuse, abandonment, addiction and child prostitution with humor, optimism, naivety and wisdom and in the process produced a novel that is beautifully written and really speaks to the plight of children in need. As Baby says, "Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it."
    • 5/5
      This is a beautiful and believable book, written from the perspective of a 12 year old living in poverty. My ability to enjoy the book was multiplied in being able to read more about the author's life and learn that she was not simply romanticizing or co-opting the experience of life in poverty, but that she had in fact grown up within the same world her main character did. The written perspectives of a 12 year old girl were extremely believable, and the writing flowed in that stream-of-consciousness, un-self-conscious way I remember thinking as a 12 year old. It's a difficult time for anyone of that age in this culture, though the difficulties are more perilous for girls living in poverty. This book deftly and beautifully makes that point.
    • 4/5
      I picked up Lullabies for Little Criminals because it's on the reading list of a class on Montreal authors that I'm hoping to take at Concordia University. In the story, Baby is a bright, intelligent twelve-year-old who is motherless and lives her heroin-addicted father in a rough area in downtown Montreal. She's surrounded by poverty, violence, drugs, prostitution but with her childlike wonder she's still able to see beauty in her squalid surroundings.I was struck by the sordidness of story's setting. I've lived in Montreal close to two years now so I'm familiar with the area where the story takes place but it was hard to picture a child growing up in those surroundings. A very naïve attitude on my part because children are often forced to live in horrible conditions all over the world. The "lucky" ones like Baby manage to salvage part of their childhood and keep a measure of hope for their future despite the obstacles in their way.The reversal of the parent-child roles is also very present in the story. In many instances, it's Baby who seems to have the role of caretaker in the relationship with her father Jules. Jules is impulsive, immature and selfish. He cares for Baby but he's unable to offer the stability she needs. Later in the story when Jules's abuse and inattention pushes Baby into the arms of the pimp Alphonse, I felt her complete vulnerability and helplessness at her inability to control her circumstances.Lullabies for Little Criminals is wonderful but heartbreaking. I felt the book got harder and harder to read but the effort was definitely worth it. It's a harsh story but it's not without beauty and hope.
    • 5/5
      Unlike any book I've read. Tough to read, painstakingly beautiful story about a young girl with a crack addict father on and off the streets of Montreal. I never wanted it to end.
    • 5/5
      2006, audiobookComments: I picked this audiobook without knowing anything at all about it, so it was all a surprise to me. Now, a few days later, I have no doubt that this tragicomic book will make my top 5 list for 2011. I listened to this audiobook, and then right out and bought a paper copy. I have ordered copies for a couple of people in my family who I think will also really like it. It’s that good.The narrator of Lullabies for Little Criminals seems to be an adult retelling the events following her twelfth birthday. Her fifteen year old parents labeled her with the unfortunate name of Baby, which was meant to be ironic and she was told that it meant she was “cool and gorgeous.” Her mom died while she was a baby, and she had been raised by her childlike, dysfunctional heroin addicted father, Jules in a series of seedy hotels in Montreal. For the first part of the book, I found Baby’s voice utterly charming and rather funny. However, as the story progressed and Baby’s life spiralled out of control, I realized that this book was significantly more serious than I had originally expected. Baby’s voice, however, remained constant throughout—poetic, keenly observant, beautifully sad and vivid, both wry and winsome at the same time. Baby is smitten with low-lifes and bohemians, and this book is full of them—guidance from healthy adults is sorely missing.O’Neill is shrewdly accurate in capturing the dialogue of this culture. The reader of this audiobook, Miriam McDonald, captured the tone perfectly. The author gives us a view of the gritty side of Montreal seen through the eyes of a twelve-year old, full of her innocence and imagination. Beyond that, the writing was a delight to both hear and read. I just didn’t want this book to end, which is unusual for me. Unfortunately for us, thus far Lullabies is O’Neill’s only novel.While I widely recommend this book, it isn’t for every reader, despite winning the CBC Canada Reads competition in 2007. Readers who are highly sensitive to swearing will quickly be turned off. The bad language, however, is not gratuitous, but an accurate portrayal of the language of her world. Further, the book dives deep into the nasty side of life, including drug addictions and child prostitution. But unless you’re extremely squeamish about these topics, I urge you to give this book a try.Lullabies for Little Criminals was nominated for the Orange Prize, Governor General's Award, IMPAC Dublin Literary award, and a whole slew of other prizes.
    • 5/5
      Great book about Baby, a 12 year old teenager who grows up in the low-income areas of Montreal, raised by a heroin-addicted, neglectful father. Written in first-person and the effectiveness of the book is emphasizing how a kid growing up in such a volatile environment can think that this life is normal and even worth defending against outsiders. All Baby wants is her father to love her more than the drugs, she's smart enough to realize that probably isn't going to happen, but young enough to still have the hope that it will. The book is engrossing, all the way through. The author is adept in drawing in the reader by showing the hidden charms of being a street kid, and the charismatic, unorthodox people and the friendships that form. When things start spiraling-down and out of control for Baby, you still stick with her and the endure the dark places she must go because the reader is already so involved in Baby's world and mindset. What I didn't like with the book is that I felt the ending was a bit abrupt, and a certain character's motivation is left unclear (in my opinion) when it should have been, at least, broadly sketched. Also, there was a significant "get to know the author" section at the back, where you learn how the author describes in her own words how she grow up as a semi-street kid in Montreal. For me, I dislike knowing how much an author's messed-up life mirrors her character's; I hate wondering whether some of the fictional sordid scenes were true-to-life for the author. I find this lessens the impact of what I just read. However, I understand how other readers might feel the opposite - that knowing the author has that basis of understanding, they feel that the story could be true and therefore it's more interesting.But I'd highly recommend it; it was well-written and funnier than I expected.
    • 5/5
      I truly loved this book. To me, it was a real page turner because I always wanted to know if Baby, a young girl, was going to be okay. I cried, I laughed. You have to be in a certain mood to read it though, it gets quite dark. I recommend it to all my friends; it makes you see the world in a different light.5 stars! Enjoy.
    • 3/5
      Worth reading? Yes. The voice is beautifully controlled and Baby, the main character, heartbreaking and quite impossible to forget. Be prepared, however, for a grim, squalid read, albeit with moments of real humor. Child prostitution, drugs and despair in equal measure. I don't shock easily, and have been accused of writing some 'too-dark' tales myself, but this one's a corker.
    • 3/5
      I must have read too many good reviews on this book because I was a little dissapointed. It was difficult to read about Baby's ordeals because I have daughters of my own. I sympathized with her. I guess with a somewhat depressing book I expected something more tragic to happen in the end. Heather O'Neill's writing did keep me reading. Her words transformed me into a dirty street kid.
    • 1/5
      I found this book to be a big disappointment, even though it was the Canada Reads winner. The 12-year-old voice of Baby does not ring true. This is a sad and depressing tale of child neglect, drug abuse and prostitution, with foul language, unintelligent people, theft and senseless vandalism, etc. For me, the story had no redeeming qualities and no sense of morality.