Daydreams of Angels: Stories

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 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 “S...