Carnivalesque

By: Neil Jordan

Narrated by: Conor Sheridan

It looked like any other carnival, but of course it wasn't. The boy saw it from the car window, the tops of the large trailer rides over the parked trains by the railway tracks. His parents were driving towards the new mall and he was looking forward to that too, but the tracery of lights above the gloomy trains caught his imagination...Andy walks into Burleigh's Amazing Hall of Mirrors, and then he walks right into the mirror, becomes a reflection. Another boy, a boy who is not Andy, goes home with Andy's parents. And the boy who was once Andy is pulled - literally pulled, by the hands, by a girl named Mona - into another world, a carnival world where anything might happen. Master storyteller Neil Jordan creates his most commercial novel in years in this crackling, filmic fantasy - which is also a parable of adolescence, how children become changelings, and how they find their own way.

©2017 Neil Jordan (P)2017 Audible, Ltd.

Critic reviews

"His cinematic sensibility yields prose of the most bewitching kind." (Sunday Times)

Listen twice or three times.

This story is highly complex and a bit abstract, but presents a totally unique perspective on creatures associated with religiosity alongside a system of magic unlike anything I have ever read before. This book is a relatively short listen and I recommend going through it twice or three times to appreciate its inventive approach. Trust me, within the first chapter it's hard to locate the thread, but so worth it in the end. I attempted to read this book several times before listening to the audio version, and now I've listened to it a dozen times - gives me goosebumps every time!

To me, this story packs a ton into a small space, which is why it takes a few goes for the big picture to come into focus. Plus, the author has a peculiar writing style that verges deeply on poetic at times. I'm trying to avoid spoilers in writing this review, but as you listen, tune in to where angels come into play, how evil entered into our reality, how a rare type of gold is used in the balance of good and evil, how laughter is harvested to sustain those fighting the good fight. When you "read between the lines" of Carnivalesque, you realize the story is actually quite familiar, just that its reflected appearance is uncanny in this form.

YAWN, YAWN, YAWN!

I must have missed the point here, or possibly this is not what I expected.