About the Book
Inventive, outlandish, and tender fairy tales from bestselling author Heather O'Neill
The fantastic has always been at the edges of Heather O'Neill's work. In her bestselling novels The Lonely Hearts Hotel, Lullabies for Little Criminals and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, she transforms the shabbiest streets of Montreal with her beautiful, freewheeling metaphors. She describes the smallest of things--a stray cat or a secondhand coat--with an intensity that makes them otherworldly.
In Daydreams of Angels, O'Neill's first collection of short stories, she gives free rein to her imaginative gifts. In "Swan Lake for Beginners," generations of Nureyev clones live out their lives in a grand Soviet experiment. In "The Holy Dove Parade," a teenage 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, fables, Bible parables--to uncover the deepest truths of family life.
About the Author :
Heather O'Neill is a contributor to This American Life, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. Her novel Lullabies for Little Criminals, an international bestseller, won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the Canada Reads competition in 2007, and was shortlisted for seven prizes, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and Canada's Governor General's Literary Award, and was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her most recent novel, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, also a bestseller, was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize and longlisted for the 2015 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and the Encore Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by several publications. She lives in Montreal.
Paul Woodson has won SOVAS & Earphones awards, and has recorded close to 350 audiobooks in many different genres--including romance, fiction, history, biography, and mystery--in American and British accents--and received his BFA in acting at Boston University. In his theater days, he worked in many NYC shows, toured the USA and Europe, and starred in NYC as Vincent van Gogh in the sung-through, OOBR Award-winning musical Vincent. He enjoys backpacking the Appalachian Trail and visiting national parks in his spare time. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA.
Erin Moon is a professional actor and an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator of over 150 novels. She lives and records in beautiful Vancouver, Canada.
Neil Hellegers grew up in New Jersey and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BA in theater arts and a minor in psychology before getting an MFA in acting from the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. He moved to New York City in 2003 and, since then, has made a career of theatrical performance, percussion, theater education, and audiobook narration. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
Lisa Flanagan is a classically trained soprano, comedian, voice-over artist, and Earphones Award-winning narrator.
Kevin Kenerly, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, earned a BA at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in more than twenty seasons, playing dozens of roles.
Lauren Ezzo, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a commercial voice talent and Chicago-based actor and graduate of Hope College. She has acted in Peppermint Creek Theatre Company's world premiere of Or You Could Kiss Me. Her narrations have placed her on several "Best of the Year" lists, including AudioFile's Best Audiobooks of the Year list. In 2018, she was part of a full cast of narrators nominated for the prestigious Audie Award for Best Original Work.
Chelsea Stephens is an experienced voice actor with a talent for mystery, sci-fi, and YA novels. She won an AudioFile Earphones Award for her narration of Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter. She has a longtime love and appreciation for the performing arts, with experience in onstage acting, singing, and voice-over. Her love for reading books and the pursuit of the story led her to narration. She enjoys unfolding characters and bringing listeners into new worlds.
Review :
"Gypsy violinists, bears on bicycles, artists washed up on a desert island--she could marry a walrus, who would be dependable, but would it be a loveless union?--populate O'Neill's strange but irresistible fables and fairy tales for adults...O'Neill is a wondrous writer whose clean declarative sentences push the stories forward. She also has an astonishing gift for metaphor, which she mines as if she has struck the mother lode. The strength of this collection is not just the stories' delectable absurdity but also their wisdom."
-- "Toronto Star"
"Keep this collection on the nightstand, and you'll be sure to kick your dreamscape up a notch."
-- "Kirkus Reviews"
"These sharp stories from Giller shortlister Heather O'Neill--sometimes disturbing, sometimes very funny--put her in a league with [Canada's] best writers...The storytelling is inventive, but the writing is as spectacular: the squeak of sneakers in a gym sounds like someone writing curse words with magic marker, a parachute opening resembles a kernel of corn popping, a woman's voice sounds like she's been eating sugared doughnuts. These are great stories superbly written by someone sure to be a major star."
-- "NOW"
