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A review by wentingthings
Daydreams of Angels: Stories by Heather O'Neill
when i was in high school & reading mostly stories of teenagers being Misunderstood, i picked up lullabies for little criminals off the (pretty scant) shelves of my school library & was blown away. it was one of the early books i'd read that had an audience that was probably mainly not teens despite the age of the character & the memory of reading it gives off a fond, faint glow.
my tastes have probably shifted from when i was 13/ 14. here, some of the wonderful language i remember o'neill for didn't win me over in the same way. o'neill's writing is full of sparkling & unusual observations every few sentences - a story so full of these can almost be too dazzling/ distracting at once. despite their beauty, some of the stories felt lifeless. i started reading portraits of a few of the people i've made cry (christine sneed) not long after i finished this collection, and was immediately drawn by some quality that burned in sneed's stories and felt missing here.
but certain stories really struck me - "The Gypsy and the Bear" which opens the collection was a wonderfully fable-like, subversive and surprising. phantom images from the story continue jumping out at me as i go around my day - visions of fields filled with cats wearing little bells, and lovers leaning across opposite windows in a tight street to kiss, the strange circularity of life. i've been going around trying to read it aloud to anyone who will listen (it's a perfect read-aloud tale, although i'm starting to suspect my voice puts people to sleep, or perhaps i'm exceptionally bad at finding opportune reading moments). "The Holy Dove Parade," had a lulling tone, disturbing and attractive. "The Story of a Rose Bush," about two children's visit to their larger-than-life grandmother, was lackadaisically heart-wrenching. "daydreams of angels," the title story starts off with a buoyancy and exuberance that is a really interesting counterpoint to the heart of the matter. "where babies come from" was a kind of wonderful extended metaphor.
so perhaps i liked this collection more than i realized. but less than i expected to, since the past is a difficult land to fully revist.
---
"in the sea, the little colourful fish flitted around these babies as if a piñata had been split open in front of their faces and there were candies falling from the sky" (from "where babies come from")
"she was so easy to love, always throwing her arms around everyone and singing popular songs from the radio before breakfast. her father yelled at her before he left that she gave him more trouble than all the other kids put together, but secretly, he had admitted to himself that she was his favourite. he had never in his life met someone who was so free" (from "daydreams of angels")
"the boy and his family had mistaken her for a regular girl. and if she could fool these people, then she could fool the entire world. and then it occurred to her that maybe they weren't mistaken at all. maybe she just happened to be a very ordinary little girl" (from "the story of little o, a portrait of the marquis de sade as a young girl)
"the old man had been too strict with his children when they were younger. now they resented him. he knew this, but he could not go back into the past and change the way he had been. he was even alone on christmas day. each year, he sat in front of the one channel that he got, waiting for the charlie brown special to come on. 'it's starting!' he would call out and then he would realize that no one was there" (from "sting like a bee" - section 2 of this story was wonderful and terribly terribly sad)
my tastes have probably shifted from when i was 13/ 14. here, some of the wonderful language i remember o'neill for didn't win me over in the same way. o'neill's writing is full of sparkling & unusual observations every few sentences - a story so full of these can almost be too dazzling/ distracting at once. despite their beauty, some of the stories felt lifeless. i started reading portraits of a few of the people i've made cry (christine sneed) not long after i finished this collection, and was immediately drawn by some quality that burned in sneed's stories and felt missing here.
but certain stories really struck me - "The Gypsy and the Bear" which opens the collection was a wonderfully fable-like, subversive and surprising. phantom images from the story continue jumping out at me as i go around my day - visions of fields filled with cats wearing little bells, and lovers leaning across opposite windows in a tight street to kiss, the strange circularity of life. i've been going around trying to read it aloud to anyone who will listen (it's a perfect read-aloud tale, although i'm starting to suspect my voice puts people to sleep, or perhaps i'm exceptionally bad at finding opportune reading moments). "The Holy Dove Parade," had a lulling tone, disturbing and attractive. "The Story of a Rose Bush," about two children's visit to their larger-than-life grandmother, was lackadaisically heart-wrenching. "daydreams of angels," the title story starts off with a buoyancy and exuberance that is a really interesting counterpoint to the heart of the matter. "where babies come from" was a kind of wonderful extended metaphor.
so perhaps i liked this collection more than i realized. but less than i expected to, since the past is a difficult land to fully revist.
---
Spoiler
notes of just a few favourite lines from among the stories:"in the sea, the little colourful fish flitted around these babies as if a piñata had been split open in front of their faces and there were candies falling from the sky" (from "where babies come from")
"she was so easy to love, always throwing her arms around everyone and singing popular songs from the radio before breakfast. her father yelled at her before he left that she gave him more trouble than all the other kids put together, but secretly, he had admitted to himself that she was his favourite. he had never in his life met someone who was so free" (from "daydreams of angels")
"the boy and his family had mistaken her for a regular girl. and if she could fool these people, then she could fool the entire world. and then it occurred to her that maybe they weren't mistaken at all. maybe she just happened to be a very ordinary little girl" (from "the story of little o, a portrait of the marquis de sade as a young girl)
"the old man had been too strict with his children when they were younger. now they resented him. he knew this, but he could not go back into the past and change the way he had been. he was even alone on christmas day. each year, he sat in front of the one channel that he got, waiting for the charlie brown special to come on. 'it's starting!' he would call out and then he would realize that no one was there" (from "sting like a bee" - section 2 of this story was wonderful and terribly terribly sad)