Heather O’Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals

Lullabies for Little Criminals

Heather O'Neill

HarperCollins, Oct 2006, $13.95

ISBN: 0060875070

In Montreal, Baby is turning twelve shortly. Her mother has been with her twenty-seven-year-old father for quite a while and he is a junkie. They move around a lot from dive hotels to run down apartments to abodes worse than either, always in the red light district where Jules seeks easy marks to con. Jules is a schemer, but never succeeds in making money because he usually explodes in a berserker rage when the slightest thing does not go in accordance to his plan, which is often as his heroin dependency rules his logic.

Baby hides as much as possible at the community center or in the apartments of other children, especially when her father is raging. Foster care, school and juvenile detention are respites from the violence though none are safe. She knows that charismatic but dangerous pimp Alphonse and kindhearted student Xavier seem to want her though she knows firsthand that sex means pain. Soon Baby's world will crash further leaving her to make adult decisions that a kid should never have to face.

Though depressing to read about a child who never had any opportunity for youthful innocence, LULLABIES FOR LITTLE CRIMINALS is a powerful look at how the young adapt to their changing circumstances. Baby is a terrific protagonist, aptly named, as she endures in an ugly world made nastier by her father's needs fueled by heroin. The storyline focuses on the little criminal, an offspring of a kid having a kid, doing what she must to endure. Heather O'Neill writes a compelling character study that showcases a young survivor.

Harriet Klausner