Description
Book Synopsis'Like Angela Carter, she is relentlessly inventive' Sunday Times
'Full of pathos, spirit and iridescent innocence' Independent on Sunday
The first novel by the author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel
12-year-old Baby is used to turmoil in her life. Her mother is long dead, her father is a junkie and they shuttle between rotting apartments and decrepit downtown hotels.
As her father's addiction and paranoia grow worse, she begins a journey that will lead her through chaos and hardship; but Baby's remarkable strength of spirit enables her to survive. Smart, funny and determined to lift herself off the city's dirty streets, she knows that the only person she can truly rely upon is herself.
Trade ReviewTold with
shafts of wit and a lightness of touch which few novels on such themes achieve. Baby, like Holden Caulfield of
Catcher in the Rye, is totally believable. Although few people suffer a childhood like hers, everyone can identify with her feelings, on the threshold of adolescence longing for stability and recognition * Times Literary Supplement *
From feisty little Scout of
To Kill a Mockingbird to Sissy Spacek's blank-eyed Holly in the film
Badlands, Heather O'Neill draws on the annals of knowing child narrators to shape Baby's shabby, scrappy scrabble from broken home to detention centre to pimp's lap and back again.
Scabrous humour and brutal insight fairly jolt each episode into life * Observer *
Vivid and poignant . . . O'Neill's novel builds to a riveting climax . . . deeply moving * Independent *
O'Neill bombards the reader with piercing observations and magical imagery . . . Her story is bleak, yet not bitter; full of
pathos, spirit and, overwhelmingly, an iridescent innocence * Independent on Sunday *
O'Neill's
vivid prose owes a debt to Donna Tartt's
The Little Friend. Baby's precocious introspection feels pitch perfect. Tear-jerkingly effective * Publishers Weekly *
Dreamy prose . . . Baby's unique voice and the glimmer of hope provided by
her intelligence and imaginative spirit live on in the mind long after you have closed the book * Waterstones Book Quarterly *
Heather O'Neill's style is laced with so much sublime possibility and merciless actuality that it makes me think of
comets and live wires * Helen Oyeyemi *
...
dreamy prose...Baby's unique voice and the glimmer of hope provided by
her intelligence and imaginative spirit live on in the mind long after you have closed the book - Waterstones Books Quarterly * Waterstone's Books Quarterly *
...vivid and poignant...a deeply moving and troubling novel - Independent * Independent *
From feisty little Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird to Sissy Spacek's blank-eyed Holly in the film Badlands, Heather O'Neill draws on the annals of knowing child narrators to shape Baby's shabby, scrappy scrabble from broken home to detention centre to pimp's lap and back again.
Scabrous humour and brutal insight fairly jolt each episode into life - The Observer * Observer *
O'Neill's vivid prose owes a debt to Donna Tartt's The Little Friend...
Baby's precocious introspection feels pitch perfect... Tear-jerkingly effective - Publishers' Weekly * Publisher's weekly *
A remarkable novel that could turn out to be huge... the very rich descriptions of a tumultuous young life and emotional reaction to each new situation add up to a cracking good read - Publishing News * Publishing News *
