'lullabies for little criminals' tells the story of Baby, a young girl growing up in Toronto as a daughter of a drug-addict father. man, this story ripped my heart out. i loved the way Baby's naive look at the world was portrayed — and yeah, of course she's naive, she's a twelve/thirteen year old child, even though she's had to grow up quick due to her father being irresponsible and ill-equiped to care for her. still, her emotional world seems to be stunted due to isolation, cruelty and predatory behaviour from grown ass men.
this is a hard read that doesn't flinch away from depicting the most awful, heinous acts a child can encounter, and how children have to cope, because what else is there? Baby is a girl that people fail all the time. grown ups of all walks of life in this book treat underprivileged and abused children like her as delinquents, and would rather deem her to be 'bad', of 'bad seed', instead of facing that she's being abused, and that she might need help. not punishment, but help.
what makes this book so devastating is, of course, not only what Baby has to go through but also how the author chose to portray her inner life. we never stray from Baby's point of view, not even in the most horrific moments, and even though she herself doesn't actively understand what she is feeling, the feelings are there. they're on the page to feel, it's nauseating. Baby is a child that thinks they are bad, that they perhaps deserve to be treated like garbage, who has no concept of what a different world would actually look like. or how she could fit into it.
i found the betrayal of her father the most grating, even though he is not administering the most hurt towards her, i'd say. in the beginning, yeah sure, he's high all the time and doesn't really take care of her, but in Baby's eyes, he is her best friend. her slowly coming to terms with the fact that he isn't though, absolutely gutted me. i've never actively thought of it this way, but yes, what else are our parents in the beginning if not our best friends? how terrible to have your best friend turn on you, destroy this friendship and your self-worth at the same time. i think heather o'neill has a way of writing about childhood that i've rarely witnessed anywhere else, even though i'd say Baby's childhood is a very extreme example.
there's only two things i am on the fence about: the writing style for one. i had a hard time getting into the story because i felt like i couldn't concentrate on the writing, the style felt weirdly evasive to me at first. it's written very quickly, choppy and takes quite some getting used to. once i was in it though, i was in it.
the second thing is the ending (SPOILERS) — i kind of don't get it? it felt very ... surreal to me. like it didn't really happen, it felt too much like wish-fullfilment. i felt like Baby didn't survive Alphonse. I felt like this was just a dream, the start of another kind of journey. i'm not sure if this is true though, i'd just interpret it that way because i didn't understand how her father acted, it felt too much like what children dream up. which is terrible to say though because a fresh new start is what Baby deserves. i wish i could gift Baby a doll she could love to death. i wish i could tell her that these men ain't shit. i wish i could pick her out of this story before any of it happened to her.
devastating, the whole thing.
