Lullabies for Little Criminals.

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I started reading “Lullabies for Little Criminals” this afternoon. I paused to cook and eat dinner with Coffee when he came home at 5pm and then I picked it back up again. I couldn’t seem to stop.

I finally flicked the light on when it grew so dark that, even with the book held up to my face, I could no longer see the words. And then it was over and I sat very still for a long while. Speechless.

The book ended as I expected it would, for the most part, and it was the most heart-wrenching piece of fiction I’ve read in a long, long time. I kept feeling sick to my stomach, dreading the turn of the page, and tears kept dripping down my face. I couldn’t stop reading. I didn’t want to stop reading.

I have no idea how to describe the book without using really trite, really superficial words. There’s a very good reason it won the Canada Reads competition.

It’s beautiful. I mean, it’s a terrible story and it’s sad and it’s heartbreaking but oh, my god, it was beautiful to read. Heather O’Neill is just.. awe-inspiring. I’m sure someone, somewhere, has remarked that it’s a “great first novel” but, in all seriousness, I’ve never read anything that was so perfectly written – every word was in the perfect place. It just stabbed into me while I devoured every paragraph.

Every character seemed real and human and every drop of dialogue was realistic. Every description was exactly as the main character would have described it, without once falling out of synch, which is incredible given that the narrator in the story is a young girl and the author is, well, an adult woman. I’ve never wanted to literally grab a character out of a book and run like hell before.

It just totally broke my heart and left me speechless.

I’m gushing. I know. But holy shit, what an amazing book.

You must read it. Buy it online, at your local bookstore, borrow it from the library.. whatever. Just read it.