Francesca Lia Block

VOYA: 5Q, 4P

As you read Weetzie Bat's lyrical, dancing, text, you get a sense that a spell is being cast around you. The characters and events are clear and yet there is a mystical approach to the description of their characters and actions. This book is unlike any other I have read in terms of writing style and was a treat to experience. I rated the popularity as a 4 because while I think it has the power to lure in people from all walks of life, I can also imagine that it could be show more off-putting to a few that don't happen to connect to the non-traditional style.

The moment I finished reading this book I wanted to open it back up and read it again. Even though I didn't grow up in LA or have really any of Weetzie's same experiences, reading this book made me feel the same way I feel when I remember being 16. It was such a weird, confusing, disjointed, awful, wonderful, magical time. Everything was completely dramatic even though I had no real responsibilities. I felt like such a grown up even though I was spending my evenings at the Sonic Drive-Thru blasting the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, writing cringe-worthy poetry, and reapplying my glittery lip gloss between french fries. show less

Block keeps knocking me out, showing rather than telling. She captures the adolescent voice, to my mind, perfectly. This small book is pure, inevitable tragedy, and I came out of it blinking at the light. Strong subtext of incest, so not for the squeamish. Block's writing is hypnotic, otherworldly, and translucent like an isinglass window in an old stove. There is so much going on offstage that she captures in a few seemingly throw-away lines that it's hardly noticeable until the end, when show more everything comes together and the fully fleshed out characters are in one's head, whole. Breathtaking. show less

Block, F.L. (2012). The elementals. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 263 pp. ISBN: 978-1-250-00549-6. (Hardcover); $24.99.

This is not Weetzie Bat. It is Francesca Lia Block and this book is an adult title that both teens and adults will appreciate. This dark, paranormal thriller still echoes Block’s beautiful way with words: “It was easy. Girls like that, I knew what they liked. Pretty things. Maybe with a little oddness, a little edge. Dolls with too-big heads and eyes that changed show more colors. Dolls with little sharp teeth and flowered dresses. Porcelain dolls with pointed elf ears that could be exchanged for normal human ones. Not just dolls but vintage gowns and shoes and jewels. And food. And music. Halloween Hotel was always a good one. Oh, and the wine of course. Made in the basement with such slight traces of cannabis, opium and ephedra that you almost couldn’t detect them, unless you were a really bright chemistry student.” (p. 255). Ariel is trying to move on with her life, go to college, find friends, but it is impossible to forget the disappearance of her best friend Jen. In fact, Ariel chooses to attend UC Berkeley to investigate Jen’s disappearance in the last place she was seen alive. The fact that Ariel’s mother has cancer complicates everything to the point of reducing Ariel to a brooding introverted mess. Ariel wanders the streets that Jen wandered hoping to feel the psychic footprints of her friend—with very little success. She suspects the creepy Fritz Kragen but cannot dig up enough compelling evidence to persuade Detective Rodriguez to investigate. She also wonders about the street man with the dreads who says to her, “’I was once like you, my friend,’ he said. ‘You could become me easy, walk out into the street covered in hair and filth and people would look at you with disgust, sister, and think you were born like that, that you never were a little child, clean as a small tree, quick as water, bright in the mind and breathing sweetly…’” (p. 233). Jen, however, is gone without a trace. College only serves to confuse and alienate Ariel. Her roommate torments her and constantly has sex in the room, which forces Ariel onto the streets. Her life improves when she meets John Graves and his group of very strange ranger roommates. Eventually John becomes her lover and the descriptions are steamy and definitely adult, even if they are not too far removed from the experiences of many teens. They are also necessary for the Ariel/Prospero mythology that fills the pages. Eventually, the crises that are Ariel’s life pull her back to Los Angeles. Ariel needs to be near her cancer-ridden mother. She needs to be there for her father—that is until the missing Jen exerts her pull once again and back to Berkeley she goes. This mystery is dark and magical, filled with musical sentences, creepy and gorgeous all the way to the startling conclusion. Fans of Weetzie Bat will love this new direction for Block and older high school teens who have never read Weetzie will clamor for more. show less

My fourth Block book and another one I absolutely love. Block is marketed as a YA author, but I question the suitability of this book for teens. This collection feels like an adult's feminist commentary on what it means to grow up as a girl and I imagine it's really hard to appreciate this direct of a commentary when you're in the thick of growing up.

It's almost funny that these are called fairy tales, because in reality they're stories for girls who didn't get to have that sort of fairy show more tale romance or sexual experience when they were in their teens. These are for and about girls who experienced rape, inappropriate relationships, and romances touched by darkness. The happy endings rarely involve romance, they're more likely to involve coping mechanisms, friendships, lessons to teach, and an overall sentiment of "get going kid, you're not dead yet."

As an adult reader who never experienced anything close to a fairytale as a teen, these darker fairy tales lit me up. I particularly enjoyed the below fairytales:

Glass, a retelling of Cinderella where she's a storyteller and her step-sisters try beat down her confidence to shut her up. The happiest and most pure of all the stories.

Wolf, a retelling of Red Riding Hood that's so reminiscent of one of my favorite movies, Freeway with Reese Witherspoon, and is basically about a girl who takes revenge into her own hands against the man who's been molesting her.

Charm, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty where Prince Charming is a girl and Sleeping Beauty is a drug addict who gets pimped out for drugs and porn.

Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast where Beauty turns into a Beast herself as she falls for him.

Few of these stories have particularly happy endings, but in a sense, they're all happy endings because the girl survives in the end. Whether she's choosing less than ideal relationships, whether everyone's against her, whether she loses everyone she loves, or she's a victim of some terrible abuse, she survives. And when you think of all the girls who don't survive these sort of things, the girls who die from suicide and drugs and homicide...it makes you more appreciative of your survival, like your own fucked up story could be a fairytale too. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that was probably Block's point with this collection. show less