Commentaires client les plus utiles
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5 internautes sur 6 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
,,,,Blew me away,,,, Aoû 6 2007
,,,Something about the title appealed to me right away,,this book had me hooked from the first page. Not only was the story of Baby so fascinating but the descriptions of every day street life were wonderfully written, in such an unusual style, it had me stopping to read paragraphs over again,,they delighted me so much,,,. I could not put it down,,,and it stayed with me for months after. You come to care about Baby,,and can feel her hopelessness in the situation she is in,,yet also begin to feel compassion for her young,abusive,immature addicted Father who doesnt know any better. What got me, apart from the main theme of street life and child abuse of course,,,was the fact that Baby thought that social workers and fosters parents really cared about her welfare, but soon realised it was just a job to them,,and she wasnt special afterall. You get to understand why she turns to drugs for comfort,,,all cleverly told thru a 12yr olds eyes,,it is riveting reading.
Baby is still in my thoughts every so often. My daughter's too,,she read it and loved it just as I did. Heather O'Neill's novel is brilliant,,,and she is now on the top of my favourite Canadian writers of all time list. Cant wait to read something else from her. Highly recommended.
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4 internautes sur 5 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
Brilliance... Sheer Brilliance, Avril 27 2008
I hadn't heard anything about this novel before I read it. I became interested in it based on the plot and intrigued by its status as the winner of Canada Reads. As it turns out, I absolutely devoured this novel in just over a day during my Christmas holidays. As a student, it's such a treat to read something that means something to me that I can pick apart and keep the parts of the novel that I like without it becoming sterile and overkilled. I love this novel entirely, and that's what I found while reading it.
What I find beautiful about this book is what I have found a lot of people criticize about it. For one, that the characters all seem overly naive and simplistic and everything seems taken in stride. I found this to be a haunting layer to the novel in that Baby, the protagonist, is only 12. She longs for childhood, she longs to see things through a child's eyes, despite that it becomes increasingly difficult for her too. The almost lighthearted tone of her relationship with her father seems purposeful, to project a sort of longing for simplicity in her life. As well, a lack of understanding and most importantly, to demonstrate that these misfortunes, tragedies and sadnesses happen to Baby all the time. This is her life. This is what she's used to. The simplicity of her vision reflects that so perfectly and seems a clear reason for the first-person narration.
Something else that people criticize about "Lullabies" is the lack of dramatic tension, the fact that it is obvious nothing happens to Baby and so the novel seems boring and predictable. While I was reading this, I found the fact that she doesn't die (or worse) incredible. Her ability to survive in this world and her dependence on luck and wit without even realizing she needs to depend on these things is amazingly and accurately portrayed.
All of these episodic events in her life are completely horrendous, all the other side characters are so tragic, all the adults are so selfish. And yet, the book is so completely beautiful that it's almost easy for us as readers to be caught up in the sweeping imagery that eclipses the horror story of this novel. Yet, gruesome, difficult-to-handle scenes pull us back in and remind us that this is Baby's brutal reality, something that she managed to find beautiful when she was 12.
O'Neill handles delicate characters with often rough, unsympathetic hands and yet, there is sympathy in even the most minute child in the novel. She walks a perfect line between tragic and gorgeous and does it so eloquently, I was in awe.
There are too many reasons to love this book. Read it and see why for yourself.
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1 internautes sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
3.0étoiles sur 5
well-written but a bit flat, Sep 8 2009
[Cross-posted on LibraryThing]
In Lullabies, we follow twelve-year-old Baby as she comes of age in the red light district of Montreal surrounded by drug addicts, pimps, and other neglected children. Her father is a junkie who cant seem to kick his habit and doesnt see the effect it has on his daughter. Her mother died when she was a baby and left a void that Baby constantly tries to fill in completely inappropriate ways.
Babys story is heartbreaking and its unsettling to read about a twelve-year-old being taken advantage of by pimps and trying to score heroin in a night club. There were times as I was reading that Id have to remind myself that all of these adult things are being recounted by a child. The story was very well-written and it had moments that were genuinely funny. I enjoyed reading it (as much you can enjoy a book about sad things) but ultimately, it didnt move me as much as Id thought it would. Despite the subject matter being so heavy and all of these things happening to Baby that would have a big emotional impact on her, they are told in such a matter-of-fact, sort of detached way that it was hard to really connect with it.
I also got a sense that the author was holding something back. As Baby gets deeper and deeper into bad situations, you keep expecting the consequences to get worse and something really terrible to happen because in reality, they certainly would for a girl doing the things she does. But ONeill seems to avoid going too deep. She sets it up, then pulls back. This was my issue with the ending as well. *Minor spoiler alert* The book seemed to be building up towards a dramatic climax, you think things cant possibly get worse for Baby, and then suddenly, shes free and all is well (relatively speaking). The means of her escape is way too convenient and the whole thing felt like a cop-out. *End spoiler* Maybe ONeill didnt want to drag readers through all that muck and leave them without hope at the end but I think that could have been managed in a way that would have stayed true to the rest of the story.
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