I'm
not sure what to think about this coming of age book. I put it aside to ponder,
and have concluded that I'm left with a lot of conflicted feelings.
This
book taught me a whole lot more about Kurt Cobain than I ever expected or
wanted to know. I finished it because my sons grew up in the era and were
hard-core fans.
I appreciated reading about places I've been to and know.
Nico's
mother left her when she was four years old, and never came back. There was no
word from her. She just disappeared. Her father loves her and works hard to
support her and make ends meet. Nico is a fan of Nirvana and obsessed with
reading about the grunge movement in general and Kurt Cobain in particular.
When Nico finds a package in their attic that reveals that her mother was
friends with Cobain, she starts to think that he is her real father.
On
a trip back from visiting her aunt in Seattle, Nico see someone she identifies
as Cobain. She manages to stowaway in his car and ends up staying with him at a
cabin in the forest. It's all kind of creepy, but thankfully, the man is not
dangerous. He helps her track down her mother's best friend and even goes so
far as to take her to Whistler, the community her mother was headed for when
she went missing.
If
you haven't figured it out already, Nico is a pretty mixed up teen. I expect
that losing a parent under such conditions would be liable to do that, but
honestly, as much as I worried for her, I didn't like her very much. That is
one of the reasons I'm conflicted. I'm also not sure that a novel about missing
and murdered women can be construed as anything but YA fiction. It was given to
me to read as a candidate for the chocolate lily collection. I wouldn't hand it
off to anyone under 12 to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment