Who the heck tagged this book “This American Life”? It’s not like it doesn’t mention it’s set in Montreal about a thousand times. Sheesh!!

*Edit: It’s a radio show! Thanks, folderofshirts.

I got excited about this book because of Heather O’Neil’s appearances on This American Life and Wiretap (dating a guy in public radio has its benefits). Her voice is so fragile and beautiful, which is how much of her writing in this book is, too.

Her protagonist, Baby, is a twelve-year-old living with her 28-year-old drug-addled dad, and she matter-of-factly gets put in social services, becomes a prostitute, and becomes addicted to drugs. However, it’s not really a sad book—O’Neil never lets Baby be too depressed, and her portrait of the Montreal youth street culture is chaotic and exciting. O’Neil has a way of writing sentences that just crush your heart or make you smile so big, and that’s what kept me reading this book in pieces. (I had to check it out from the library twice, renewing it a total of four times, before I finished it.)

Not as good as everyone would have you believe. I found the characters to be almost entirely unsympathetic, and unlike emily, I didn’t experience any emotion whatsoever while reading the book. Many of the phrases used to describe Baby’s surroundings were very nice, but that’s about the only thing that made the book worth consuming. Moreover, even those phrases were flawed, since I can’t bring myself to believe that a 12 year old girl would possibly use these beautiful phrases. You might argue that it’s not young Baby thinking those things, but rather old Baby remembering, but I don’t think the tenses were worked out well enough in the book to be able to distinguish what was Baby-then and Baby-later.

I seriously couldn’t put this book down. I had to re-read quite a few paragrahps and sentences, becuase they wre too beautiful to only read once. I cried near the end. It was wonderful. I really felt like I had become a 12 year old girl living in Montreal.

I am not sure how a book so heartwrenchingly desperate and sad left me so suffused with hope at the end. I’m not sure if I enjoyed it. I really don’t know. The voice was… different. Young, and neither reliable nor unreliable. Perhaps too self-aware? There were phrases that really resonated throughout, though, and echoes of the pain of children benignly abused. It’s not for the prudish or faint of heart though. Not for those who want to think of children as innocent and ever good. Not for those who wish to think of the world as kind.

But worth reading.

This is the first book I’ve read for this year’s Canada Reads.