Description
"Andy walks into Burleigh's Amazing Hall of Mirrors, and then he walks right into the mirror, [becoming] 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"--Amazon.com.
Genres
Collection
Publication
Bloomsbury USA (2017), Edition: 1st, 288 pages
User reviews
LibraryThing member JJbooklvr
A magical world that felt like a cross between The Night Circus and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I was pulled in right from the beginning in this enchanting story with a cinematic feel. Just like certain characters in the book who experienced time in a different way, I would sit down for just
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a few minutes to read and before I knew it an hour or more had passed in what seemed the blink of an eye. Mythology, folklore, coming of age, and a dash of love all expertly crafted into a story that will captivate and delight. You will not look at carnivals the same way again. Show Less
LibraryThing member bragan
A boy walks into the hall of mirrors at a carnival only to be drawn into a mirror and replaced by his reflection. Then someone pulls him out, after which he stays with the carnies, who are in fact magical beings of folklore.
All of which actually makes it sound more straightforward than it probably
But overall, honestly, it feels to me like a literary experiment that's interesting enough to be worth a look, but just never quite fully works.
All of which actually makes it sound more straightforward than it probably
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is. Really, this is just an odd little novel. The prose is strange and dreamlike, and at some point near the end it shifts suddenly from a languid sort of fantasy to full-on horror and gets much more plotty than you'd expect for about ten minutes before it abruptly resolves all of that and moves rapidly to an end, if not exactly a conclusion. There's an interesting combination of familiar and novel elements here, and I actually did rather like the horror stuff, even if it did take me by surprise. The prose is sometimes rather pretty (even if not always as much so as it seems to think it is).But overall, honestly, it feels to me like a literary experiment that's interesting enough to be worth a look, but just never quite fully works.
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Original language
English