The experience seems to have left her determined to see wonder in unlikely places. Abandoned by her mother, O’Neill was raised by her father in a rough neighbourhood in Montreal and had a closeup view of the streets. Heather O’Neill’s 2006 debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, dealt with similar themes, some drawn from her own childhood. Rose, the more canny and more tragic of the two, can calculate exactly what she has lost. Pierrot never quite adapts to his loss of innocence. Initially, Pierrot fares better than Rose, but he is someone to whom things happen, and a lack of street smarts means that his fall from grace is swift and hard. Escape seems possible, happiness imminent.Īs the mother superior knows, though, happiness always leads to tragedy, and Rose and Pierrot are farmed out as teens to separate homes, with no idea where the other has gone. But one day, Rose and Pierrot impress a wealthy woman with their piano playing and dancing, and soon they are performing for rich people all over Montreal. The nuns charged with caring for the two are envious, cruel, prone to perversion, and set about defiling their innocence.
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