lullabies for little criminals by Heather O'Neill
Wednesday, December 12, 2007 by Half Naked
It's one of those books where you become the character. If you read in the morning you walk around the rest of the day with the person you just read moving around in your soul, using your voice, your hands, your mind.She makes you sick to your stomach. She makes you afraid that someone is going to find you out. Or worse, they did find you out and no one is telling you they know how fucked up you are. They know your past, your dirty, secret, mind.
Heather O'Neill has touched me just that way. She touched my dirty spot by letting me touch hers, or Baby's. It is both horribly awful and frighteningly beautiful- beyond understanding but an intricate knowing.
It's the kind of book that makes you sure it's based on the real life story of the author, how else could she know? At least, that's what it made me think.
It was written in that way that shakes your foundation, if just for a day or two. The words on the pages linger in your heart in the way Baby describes her father, Jules, smoking in slow motion when he is high, "The smoke came out of his mouth like ribbons being pulled off a present"(21). It is also these images that so clearly put you behind the eyes of 12 year old Baby who was born to her 15 year old parents, raised by her heroin addict father after her mother died when Baby was one. She becomes a motherless friend to her father and an abandoned girl within reach of the lecherous and the loving.
In my travels to ravage any piece of information on Heather O'Neill that I could, via the Internet, I found the Compulsive Overreader's review of this book. She says this,
"The first part of the novel moved slowly, I thought — it was rambling
and episodic and I wondered if things were ever going to start happening. Then
they do start happening and the story moves toward its conclusion, leaving the
reader unsure what kind of outcome to hope for. I found the ending not quite
satisfying — but it could have been much worse. The book is engaging and
enjoyable, a quirky portrayal of beauty found in unexpected places."
I couldn't disagree more.
As I mentioned, in reading this book I couldn't fathom that the author hadn't lived this life. I started to wonder if someone who hadn't lived close to this life would be affected the way I was. Would these words and images rock someone who had lived a comfortable life (yes, I am assuming) as they had rocked me? It would seem, apparently not. At least, not from the sound of the Compulsive Overreaders review.
Early in the book O'Neill describes what Baby sees walking into her motel apartment (located in the red light district of Montreal). After having been told by Jules to "Quit following us. Go play with your doll! Get lost, okay?" (11) as he and Lester go to score some "chocolate milk" (9), Baby later finds Jules back at home with two of his friends,
"I walked in to the living room and saw a man I didn't know sitting on the
couch between Jules and Lester. They were sitting there like Wynken, Blynken,
and Nod: three little boys who were tucked in together, about to sail off into
the starry universe. They all had a similar expression when I walked in, with
their eyebrows raised and their eyes closed, as if they were bored
aristocrats... Jules was holding a teacup daintily in his hand to tip his
cigarette ashes in" (17).
She had me captured prior to the above, but at the description of the bored aristocrats... she really had me. Maybe you had to have experienced this at some level to appreciate the beauty in that phrase.
O'Neill seamlessly entwines the image the junky has of himself, whilst trying to keep his eyes open, and the ridiculous way in which they are seen by the world- described in the words of a child.
How could anything so perfectly splayed ever come off as starting slow?
The Compulsive Overreader's review finds it's way to mine simply because I both loved this book and hated it. In the midst of my own disappointment in this book I came across this blog and was at once offended at the mediocre review. But, I digress.
O'Neill captured me at once into a tale that was not heroic, but a plain simple truth that was written with humour yet still managed to evoke such sadness. A sadness that was not asked of by the author, but required by truth. O'Neill makes you laugh, Baby makes you cry. It is a tale of Baby being 12 and turning 13 in the inner city of the down and outs, prostitutes and pimps , the poor and the poorer, the unloved and unwanted, children and their junkys.
My utter disappointment lay in her ability to make this story seem so true that I thought Baby could have been my next door neighbour. It was written so well that I felt betrayed to find out that it was not based on a true story. As if she unwittingly mocked those of us who did live that life. Even though I didn't. Not to the extent that Baby did. I, like O'Neill, grew up in that place, and for whatever reason, I watched more than I partook.
So, in the end I don't know what I am bitching about. It was a great read that affected me greatly.
That's what a good story is, and this is that, and more.
Thanks for linking to my review even though you disagreed with it so strongly ... of course if we all had the same opinion, it wouldn't be interesting to discuss books! I wanted to love this book more than I did, and I'm still thinking about why I found it unsatisfying. Maybe it was because Baby's life experience differed so much from mine ... but I don't think so. I have been utterly captivated by books about people whose lives were very far removed from anything I've experienced (Khaled Hosseini comes to mind, and of course a lot of historical fiction). Surely one thing a good writer SHOULD be able to do is bring us into the life experience of someone completely different from ourselves? And judging by reviews I've read, O'Neill in this novel has managed to do that for a lot of people ... to make Baby's world real. I just needed something more from this book that it wasn't giving ... maybe just a stronger plot or different pacing. But hey, it's a major-award-nominee, so my opinion is obviously the minority here!!
As I said, interesting to discuss different viewpoints -- that's why I have a book blog.
TrudyJ @ compulsiveoverreader.wordpress.com