News & Reviews

WORD: Harper to publish gritty Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill

Harper has picked up Heather O’Neill’s novel Lullabies for Little Criminals, literary agent Sam Stoloff told WORD‘N‘BASS.com. O’Neil takes some risks in this debut about a 12-year-old girl living with a volatile father on the streets of Montreal.

"It's an oddly charming, somewhat wistful portrait of a street kid’s cockeyed world," said Sam, an agent with the Frances Goldin Literary Agency in New York City. He noted that summer 2006 was a possible publication date, though it hasn’t been finalized.

Lullabies for Little Criminals is told from the point of view of Baby, who spends time in foster homes, abandoned in an apartment, and on the streets of Montreal. That’s where O’Neill takes on tough subjects like underage sex, a topic many first-time novelists would just as soon avoid.

Baby flirts with taboos by dating a pimp, turning tricks and experimenting with drugs. But in the end she decides she’d just as soon stay a kid for a while longer, Sam said.

Heather is a writer and spoken word artist from Montreal. Her book of poems, two eyes are you sleeping, reportedly covers topics of the street such as perversity, drug addicts and con men.

< Back to News & Reviews Home