Amazing resilience

I can't say I loved Lullabies for Little Criminals because it was so heart wrenching, but I will never forget the main character, Baby. Although a novel, this book reads like an autobiography and seemed very believable, even though Baby's life (up to age 13) involved one tragedy after another. Unlike Running With Scissors, which told a similar story of totally dysfunctional parenting (and which I didn't like), I never once thought to myself "Oh, come on... that couldn't REALLY have happened." Another thing I really liked about this book is that the secondary characters were well developed and multi-dimensional. Neither Alphonse, the pimp, nor Baby's father were cast as villains, although they certainly betrayed this young girl.