Daydreams of Angels

The acclaimed author of Lullabies for Little Criminals presents a collection of “strange but irresistible fables and fairy tales for adults” (Toronto Star).

The fantastic has always been at the edges of Heather O’Neill’s work. In her bestselling novels Lullabies for Little Criminals and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, she transformed the shabbiest streets of Montreal with her freewheeling imagination. Now she brings the same blend of poetic invention and human depth to Daydreams of Angels, her first collection of short stories.

In “The Ugly Ducklings,” generations of Nureyev clones live out their lives in a grand Soviet experiment. In “Dear Piglet,” a teenaged cult follower writes a letter to explain the motivation behind her crime. And in another tale, a grandmother reveals where babies come from: the beach, where young mothers-to-be hunt for infants in the surf. Each of these beguiling stories twists the beloved narratives of childhood—fairy tales, storybooks, Bible stories—to uncover the deepest truths of family life.