heather O'neill Dazzles With A First Novel Of Extraordinary Prescience And Power, A Subtly Understated Yet Searingly Effective Story Of A Young Life On The Streets - And The Strength, Wits, And Luck Necessary For Survival.

At Thirteen, Baby Vacillates Between Childhood Comforts And Adult Temptation: Still Young Enough To Drag Her Dolls Around In A Vinyl Suitcase Yet Old Enough To Know More Than She Should About Urban Cruelties. Motherless, She Lives With Her Father Jules, Who Takes Better Care Of His Heroin Habit Than He Does Of His Daughter. Baby's Gift Is A Genius For Spinning Stories And For Cherishing The Small Crumbs Of Happiness That Fall Into Her Lap. But Her Blossoming Beauty Has Captured The Attention Of A Charismatic And Dangerous Local Pimp Who Runs An Army Of Sad, Slavishly Devoted Girls - A Volatile Situation Even The Normally Oblivious Jules Cannot Ignore. And When An Escape Disguised As Betrayal Threatens To Crush Baby's Spirit, She Will Ultimately Realize The Power Of Salvation Rests In Her Hands Alone.

in Her Debut Novel, This American Life Contributor O'neill Offers A Narrator, Baby, Coming Of Age In Montreal Just Before Her 12th Birthday. Her Mother Is Long Dead. Her Father, Jules, Is A Junkie Who Shuttles Her From Crumbling Hotels To Rotting Apartments, His Short-term Work Or Moneymaking Schemes Always Undermined By His Rage And Paranoia. Baby Tries To Screen Out The Bad Parts By Hanging Out At The Community Center And In Other Kids' Apartments, By Focusing On School When She Can And By Taking Mushrooms And The Like. (she Finds Sex Mostly Painful.) Stints In Foster Care, Family Services And Juvenile Detention (nostalgia Could Kill You There) Usually End In Jules's Return And His Increasingly Erratic Behavior. Baby's Intelligence And Self-awareness Can't Protect Her From Parental And Kid-on-kid Violence, Or From The Seductive Power Of Being Desired By Alphonse, A Charismatic Predator, On The One Hand, And By Xavier, An Idealistic Classmate, On The Other. When Her Lives Collide, Baby Faces Choices She Is Not Equipped To Make. O'neill's Vivid Prose Owes A Debt To Donna Tartt's The Little Friend; The Plot Has A Staccato Feel That's Appropriate But That Doesn't Coalesce. Baby's Precocious Introspection, However, Feels Pitch Perfect, And The Book's Final Pages Are Tear-jerkingly Effective. (oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.