Where Did You Sleep Last Night

Crosbie (Paul’s Case) has written a remarkable love story between a lonely teenager and the deceased singer Kurt Cobain. Evelyn Gray, neglected by her alcoholic mother and terrorized by kids at her school in the small town of Carnation, Wash., develops an idolatrous love for the Nirvana singer, who died before she was born, writing him letters and obsessively confiding in his poster above her bed. After a drug overdose, she wakes to find Cobain, now reincarnated and renamed Celine Black, lying in the hospital bed next to hers, with only fragmentary memories of his past life. The couple, recognizing similar passions in each other, escape from the hospital and run away to become musicians, forming their own bands. But soon their celebrity seems only to fuel their passionate jealousies and urgent love, and they begin to rely on heroin more and more to cope with these pressures, until their excessive lifestyle spins into violence. The surreal stream of-consciousness Crosbie adopts to describe their drug highs feels remarkably authentic. By turns funny and tragic, fan fiction and elegy, this is a must-read for Nirvana fans. Named for the song popularized by Lead Belly, which Cobain sang in one of his final performances, the novel is just as moving and raw. Agent: Carolyn Forde, Westwood Creative Artists. (Sept.)