Lullabies For Little Criminals

I was instructed to read (Lullabies for Little Criminals) was the 2007 winner of the CBC Canada Reads competition. The bright green cover featured a stencilled illustration of a young girl skipping. “It's a little intense,” my friend prefaced, “it's the story of a girl raised by an addict—she's twelve, it's not that depressing...just a little weird. So well written.” She attempted to quell the look of hesitation and panic that was clearly beginning to emote over my face. Light reading, I had approached her under the pretence of elevating my current glut of addictions literature...but her reviews were glowing, and I have nothing but trust in her recommendations—I started in on the book immediately.

Lullabies for Little Criminals is narrated by the terrifyingly quiet, steady voice of Baby, a twelve year old girl. Her mother died when she was a few weeks old, and her father has been addicted to heroin most of the life that Baby can remember. The story is set over the course of about a year, the cadence of the book so appropriate—time stretches out and fills in space as one would expect time would do for a twelve year old. Weeks seem like eons. Parents are small gods, regardless of what they do to you. You are resoundingly struck by how quickly Baby has had to grow up. That almost post-modern aspect of the style of writing, the stepping outside yourself to address the situation à la Eggers, is incredibly tragic and omnipotent. She writes in short, simple sentences, knitting together powerful, poignant images, and developing her character.

Telling the story in this way, as a twelve year old girl, moreover a daughter, so she's filled with extra love, this really non-judgemental portrait is painted of her father, and of his ailments. It's so honest and cold because it is not clinical, but rather filled with acceptance. Even though Jules, her dad, is part of one of the most bedraggled, judged castes in societies, he is still her dad, and she loves him, and tries exhaustingly to understand him, but at the same time has learned through experience that he is also beyond understanding.

This is why I keep reading books like this-partially to have a better understanding of addiction itself, but also partially to understand how a multifaceted issue can present itself so differently through different lenses and roles in society--and consequently have such profoundly different (albeit often subtle) effects. This book also became a different, crippling way to understand childhood.

That is why this novel is great-not because it is a truthful first hand account of childhood immersed in addiction, but rather that children are these super resilient, lovely, amazing little things that keep kids going. My friend summed it up perfectly during a rapid exchange of texts:

“It's not THAT sad – she's so... seeemingly unaffected by it, you know? Like you're probably sadder than she is, which I think is kind of a strange message of the book.”

Ultimately, this book is about the resilience and fragility of childhood. It's about imagination, and part of the sadness I felt during the novel, was that this imagination that protects children is so inherit and biological that it stiches across all castes and classes. At one point, O'Neil describes looking at snails with a classmate, with a tender shared intimacy that appears nowhere else in the novel.

This book evokes a mourning for lost childhood and an increased trust in it's strength. It's a lullaby for little criminals everywhere. A fantastic introduction to Ms. O'Neil's work-looking forward to the next one I read, and highly recommended to others.

http://katiclops.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/lullabies-from-heather-oneil