A gritty, heart-rendering first novel about a young girl coming of age on the rough streets of Montreal, by a contributor to 'This American Life'.
'Lullabies for Little Criminals' is the heart-breaking and wholly original debut novel by Heather O'Neill, about a young girl fighting to preserve her 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 scarcely more than a child himself, and 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; and he wants her body and soul -- when the Johns don't take he covets for himself. At the same time, a tender an 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...
