The Carnival at Bray
Ratings3
Average rating4.7
It's 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she'll ever find her place in this new world. When first love and sudden death simultaneously strike, a naive but determined Maggie embarks on a forbidden pilgrimage that will take her to a seedy part of Dublin and on to a life- altering night in Rome to fulfill a dying wish. Through it all, Maggie discovers an untapped inner strength to do the most difficult but rewarding thing of all, live.
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oh man, I messy cried at this one. I was a little skeptical at the premise–historical fiction set in the 80s/90s sometimes just feels to me like an author being like “eh, this is when I grew up, so we'll go with that?” but here, Nirvana/Kurt Cobain felt really important to the story in a way that I think is recognizable to a contemporary YA audience while still being a separate, unique element. You couldn't just swap out Nirvana for some other band and have the story function the same. (I feel similarly about [b:After Tupac and D Foster 1583449 After Tupac and D Foster Jacqueline Woodson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1402530480s/1583449.jpg 1576318]).Anyway, more than that, I loved Maggie, and her relationship with her family and new classmates all felt so true. I especially loved her travels with Eoin and the way she's changed by the people she meets in hostels. Just–really powerful and great. A good readalike for Gayle Forman, maybe. Has some sex (realistically & awkwardly portrayed), drugs, and rock & roll, so I wouldn't hand it out to the tweens.
