Francesca
Lia Block
Completed 2/22/2018,
Reviewed 2/22/2018
4 stars
This book was inducted into the Gaylactic Spectrum Award
Hall of Fame. It’s an omnibus of five short
novels about a girl named Weetzie Bat, her friends and children. Reading these lesser known but award winning
books is always a craps shoot. You never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes I wonder how some of these books
ever won awards, or were even nominated.
This book starts out rather weird, with a strange prose style and
clearly written for YA. I had my
doubts. But with each story, the prose matures,
like the Harry Potter series, as if the author knew her fan base was getting
older too. I was hesitant liking the
book with the first few stories, but was completely engrossed in the later
stories.
Weetzie is a California girl who builds a family of eclectic
characters around her. They are all
searching for love and acceptance. Most
of her friends have wild names. For
example, her beloved is My Secret Agent Lover Man, and her step-daughter is
Witch Baby. The characters are not very
deeply drawn, but I still got attached to them.
They are all colorful and go through some journey of self-doubt and
discovery.
The stories are like fairy tales with magical realism. There are ghosts and a genie and lots of strange
happenings. They range from Weetzie
meeting My Secret Agent Lover Man, to the teen crises of her daughters, to the
coming out sagas of her best friends. The
stories, while fanciful, are still pretty deep, covering topics like love, pre-marital
sex, homosexuality, interracial relationships, and AIDS.
Despite really liking this book, I don’t have much to say. The stories are too short to go into much
detail without giving spoilers. So
rather than try to just fill up space, I’ll conclude with giving this book four
stars out of five.
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