Daydreams of Angels: Stories

The fantastic has always been at the edges of Heather O’Neill’s work. In her bestselling novels, and , 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 , 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.