Lullabies for Little Criminals

Baby is twelve. Her mother dies soon after she was born, so she lives with her father – and his heroin addiction.

She’s grown up in Montreal’s red-light district, never staying anywhere long enough to call it home and now she’s losing the only constant in her life: her father. He’s been sent to hospital and she’s been forced into foster care. She longs for his return; other people’s families are no substitute for her own. Starved of affection, Baby is attracted to all the wrong people, and when her father betrays her and she is sent to a juvenile detention centre, she is more at risk than ever.

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Heather O'Neill reads from Lullabies for Little Criminals

Heather O’Neill

was born in Montreal and moved to Virginia when her parents separated. She writes for The New York Times Magazine and the radio show, This American Life. She lives in Montreal with her partner and daughter. Lullabies for Little Criminals is her first novel.

Heather O'Neill's q & a

What sparked Lullabies for Little Criminals?
I always wanted to write something about young people that would be incredibly funny and dark at the same time. A lot of things sparked this book, from undershirts with The Incredible Hulk on them to men in second hand suits selling handwritten poems on the subway. The tragicomedy that is lowerclass life in North America, I guess.

Where and when is the novel set?
It is set in Montreal in the late nineteen eighties, early nineteen nineties.

Do you have a favourite character in the novel?
I guess Jules. He personifies everything that is sexy and appealing about going up the down staircase.

What's your favourite children's book and why?
I guess Alice in Wonderland. All the characters in Lullabies are part Alice, part Mad Hatter.