Save Me, Kurt Cobain by Jenny Manzer

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