Carnivalesque

A simple trip to the carnival changes Andy’s life. When he enters the House of Mirrors, something strange happens: Andy walks into a mirror, and another boy emerges on the other side, going home with his parents in his place. A girl named Mona pulls him through into a carnival world, where his old life begins to distance itself, and he takes on a new self, one called Dany, that has a role to play.

Carnivalesque is a fairytale unlike any other, with beautiful prose. It’s a parable of adolescence seen through the eyes of changelings–as both Andys struggle to adjust to their new lives, both are coming of age in these mirror images of the other. Dany finds himself falling further and further into this carnival world, and it starts to take him over. Meanwhile, his experiences are balanced out by the not-Andy who introduces the bizarre into a formerly mundane life. Jordan succeeds masterfully and maintains a literary style with a brazen and strange view of the carnival that’s breathtaking and easily immerses you into the world.

Carnivalesque is mesmerizing, with lovely language and bizarre characters who show the beauty in eccentricity.