Francesca Lia Block

Stand-alone novels and collections:

The Rose and the Beast: Nine Fairy Tales — (1993) Publisher: Beauty, Snow White, Rose Red - you've met them all in many incarnations. But you haven'tmet Charm or Snow or Tiny, not as Francesca Lia Block has imagined them. Within her singular, time-less landscapes, the brutal and the magical collide. In Block's retelling of these tales, the heroine triumphs because of the strength she finds in a pen, a paintbrush, a lover, a friend, a mother, and, finally, in herself.

The Rose and the Beast: Nine Fairy Tales: A Dark, Stunning Collection of Tales

The Rose and the Beast: Nine Fairy Tales was my first look into the writing of Francesca Lia Block, and I was immediately captivated by both her style and tone and her unsurpassable use of imagery, and her ability to make old fairytales into new, darker and profound creations. It is gradually becoming clear in the general world of literature that fairytales in their original form were not at all intended for children, and the advent of sweet little fairytales, beginning with the Brothers Grimm and accumulating in the works of Enid Blyton, are gradually heading back to what they were originally used for: deep insights into the minds and souls of human beings as a whole. With that in mind, Francesca Lia Block perfectly captures their essence and meaning. The cover art also captures this regard for fairytales — the front shows a beautiful young woman — but by turning the book around to see her lower half, one can see that her hands are talons. Needless to say, this book is not for children.

There are nine tales in this volume, four of which are set in an entirely fairytale world, separate from our own, ("Snow," "Glass," "Rose," "Beast") and five of which are 'misplaced' fairytales, being played out in our contemporary world ("Tiny," "Charm," "Wolf," "Bones," "Ice").

"Snow" is a retelling of Snow White, which highlights a new angle on the tale — bringing forth not the love of Snow White's mother or her lover, but that which the old stories always forget to mention — that of the affection between Snow and the seven dwarfs. My favourite quotes: first when the dwarfs look upon her as a baby: "they knew then that she was the love they had been seeking in every face forever before this," and when it is pointed out that "She loved them. This is what no one tells. She loved them."

"Tiny" is a reworking of Thumbelina. A mother looses eight children to death, but her ninth child is the size of her thumb, though "there was a perfectly normal heartbeat flickering on the screen like a miniature star." Tiny grows, unaware of her difference, till she sees her first male — a young man, searching for his Muse. Falling in love, Tiny appoints herself a Hero, and goes after him...

"Glass" is a stunning retelling of Cinderella, in which our heroine is caught between the safety and predictability of her sisters, and the love she finds with her own Prince Charming. A natural storyteller, she is unawares of how easy she is to love, of her gift to transform, and of how she can change herself from sand into something clear and pure — like glass.

"Charm" is the dark and disturbing tale based on Sleeping Beauty, in which the spindle is a heroin needle, and thrown into a world of drugs, photographs and glamour. But in this case, Sleeping Beauty cannot sleep, and only one person in the world can help her find rest and awaken her from her nightmare.

"Wolf" is Little Red Riding Hood, where a Stepfather takes the place of a wolf and threatens the lives of a young girl and her mother. Running for the desert and her grandmother, the heroine finds that she has to face her greatest fear when he turns up at her one place of sanctuary.

"Rose" is the tale of Rose White and Rose Red, the dearest of friends, and the inevitable breaking of their friendship when one of them falls in love. It is simple, heartbreaking and yet utterly true in its message — the everchanging role of love and connections with other people. If you are familiar with the story, you may be saddened by the loss of the character of the dwarf that hinders the girls so badly, but the great black bear is still intact.

"Bones" is perhaps the most ambiguous of the stories simply because it is based on "Bluebeard," a tale that many may not know. The old story goes that a young woman marries Bluebeard who tells her she can go anywhere in the house expect in a particular room. Needless to say, the instant he leaves the house she open the door...and finds the bodies of his previous wives. In this case, Bluebeard is Derrick Blue, a talent scout who lures young women to his home in order to do what the original Bluebeard did. For a girl who begins wishing she was in a fairytale as "at least the girls in the stories were alive before they died" she ends vowing to listen to the tales of the 'bones' of the previous victims, and let their stories be known.

"Beast" is another favourite of mine, with the fascinating angle of having Beauty prefer the beast to the man he changes into. The imagery in this one is also beautiful, as Beauty becomes more and more wild and "tries to retrain herself from licking her hand as if it were a paw."

But Francesca Lia Block saves the best for last. In "Ice," based on the Snow Queen, we meet two lovers utterly enveloped in each other, until K. is lured away by the perfect beauty of the Snow Queen. Block exceeds herself here with the potency of her words — a girl too afraid to fight for her love as she is convinced that something as perfect as their love cannot possibly last, a boy trapped between two women, and of course, the regal Ice Queen that we've all met in our own lives at one time or another, and her ability to make us see the worst in ourselves. This is my favourite short story of all time.  —Rebecca   Comments

Ecstasia — (1993) Young adult. Publisher: Siblings Calliope and Rafe, along with Dionisio and Paul, are Ecstasia—the most popular band in Elysia, a city of jewels and feathers, of magic and music, where the only crime is growing old. Then Calliope’s visions take her to Under, where the Old Ones go to die, and where her parents had vanished long ago. Rafe joins her there, in search of the Doctor, who can bring back the dead to ease their loved ones’ broken hearts. And that is when rapture turns to nightmare.

Primavera — (1994) Young adult. Publisher: From the very moment she was born, Primavera’s songs made water flow and flowers blossom. She brought new life to the desert where her family lives. But even in Paradise there are dreams that cannot be fulfilled. Primavera is in love with a man who can never be hers—so when a handsome stranger offers her the gift of a horse-headed motorcycle, Primavera leaves home in search of the magical city of Elysia, the city once ruled by her parents’ band, Ecstasia. But in Elysia, Primavera discovers that she has left behind everything she truly needs, everyone she truly caresabout—and, if the city has its way, she will never find her way back home.

Primavera: "Find What You Must Find, Who You Must Find..."

Francesca Lia Block's novel Primavera is the sequel to an earlier novel Ecstasia, which should probably be read before continuing with this one. I hadn't read Ecstasia, and though this didn't prevent me from grasping what was going on here, I couldn't help but feel that some of the action that takes place would have been better understood and more poignant had I previously read Ecstasia.

From what I gathered here, Ecstasia concerned a four-person band (Calliope, Dionisio, Paul, and Rafe) who lived in the beautiful city of Elysia which revered the youthful and cast out the old — much like Hollywood. Their band Ecstasia was a huge success, but eventually they tired of the city and escaped to the desert, where their music created a paradise for them to dwell in. Calliope and Dionisio married and had a daughter, the focus of this sequel, called Primavera.

Despite living in paradise, Primavera is discontented. She is fascinated with the thought of Elysia, tired of the confines of the garden and tragically in love with Paul, who cannot love her in return given that he's gay and 'married' to Primavera's uncle Rafe. Thus when a handsome man comes to the garden with a horse-headed motorcycle, Primavera discreetly makes her escape. It is her adventures to and within Elysia that make up the bulk of the book; she meets a range of interesting characters, vivid landscapes and surreal situations.

I can't go any further without mentioning the language Block instigates in her novels, as anyone who is unfamiliar with it can be caught quite off-guard. The best way to describe any of her books is to say they are prose-poetry novels, and as such can be quite difficult to grasp (a good comparison would be to Patricia McKillip's novels) as the language is dense and metaphorical, and sometimes obscures narrative and meaning. Some may be frustrated at this, and at times I myself wondered if the fanciful style was simply used to cover-up a weak storyline, but though it's true that certain sentences can feel a bit too "flowery," they are an essential part of Block's novels and a necessary component to the atmosphere of the story. Some of her sentences and ideas are utter gems. My main problem lay with Primavera's "songs," sporadically placed throughout the novel; a better description of them would have been "poems" considering they cannot be set to music, and often interrupt the flow of the novel rather than provide insights into it.

But for all of this, the story itself is fascinating, which can best be described as a coming-of-age story for a young teenage girl. Primavera feels the restless spirit of most young people, one so strong that it induces her to leave paradise, brave several terrifying dangers and return once more, much like the story of the Prodigal Son (or in this case daughter). Some of the situations she finds herself in are truly harrowing, and therefore I recommend not tackling this novel unless you're prepared to handle the issues Block raises, which include drug-use, rape, homosexuality, abandonment, cruelty and possibly even bestiality. Of course, Block's gift is her ability to hide the controversy of this ideas behind her iridescent language (reminding me of the similar technique used in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange) and so if you are super-sensitive to these issues, rest assured Block does not explore them in minute detail, leaving such things up to the reader to ponder. It's up to you as to how deep you read into them.

The best feature of Primavera is the use of Greek mythology and other fantasy elements to create a world totally unlike our own, and yet resonating in our minds; a world made up of carnival-cities, humid desert gardens and glass towers in the desert and filled with hybrid creatures: mermaids, giants, fauns, centaurs and bird-women. Block's world is one that we could never really go to save in our imaginations, and yet it feels real.

So Primavera comes recommended, especially if preceded with Ecstasia, as do Block's other novels. If you enjoy the fairytale ambience of Primavera, then Block's anthology of re-imagined fairytales The Rose and the Beast should be your next stop.  —Rebecca   Comments

I Was a Teenage Fairy — (1998) Young adult. Publisher: Maybe Mab was real. Maybe not. Maybe Mab was the fury. Maybe she was the courage. Maybe later on she was the sex...A tiny fairy winging her way through the jasmine-scented L.A. night. A little girl caught in a grown-up glitz-and-glitter world of superstars and supermodels. A too beautiful boy with a secret he can never share...From the author of Weetzie Bat comes a magical, mesmerizing tale of transformation. This is the story of Barbie Marks, who dreams of being the one behind the Cyclops eye of the camera, not the voiceless one in front of it; who longs to run away to New York City where she can be herself, not some barley flesh-and-blood version of the plastic doll she was named after. It is the story of Griffin Tyler, whose androgynous beauty hides the dark pain he holds inside. And finally it is the story of Mab, a pinkie-sized, magenta-haired, straight-talking fairy, who may or may not be real but who helps Barbie and Griffin uncover the strength beneath the pain, and who teaches that love—like a sparkling web of light spinning around our bodies and our souls—is what can heal even the deepest scars.

Echo — (2001) Publisher: Jealous of her perfect mother and ignored by her artist father, Echo seeks attention and healing from a variety of people living in beautiful Los Angeles.

Echo: "There Were So Many Tears Inside Me..."

For anyone who's ever read Francesca Lia Block before, you'll know what to expect here. Riddled with teenage angst, fairytale settings and dense, poetic language, Echo provides another glimpse into the mind of tortured, restless adolescence. As always, Block's novel stands outside any particular genre; is it fantasy or drama? Poetry or prose? Magic realism or something else entirely? As always, her trademark style is the use of her intoxicating language, which again defies description, but is best compared to fantasist Patricia McKillip. Like McKillip, reading Block for the first time is always a little confusing, for the language is layered so thickly over narrative and character that it's difficult to keep track of what's happening and who it's happening to.

This is especially true in the case of Echo, as the story is not just about this young woman attempting to find her place in the world, but concerns the myriad of friends, lovers, parents and predators that full her life, who are all given their own intertwining stories. For some, her techniques may come across as weak and pretentious. I don't consider myself qualified enough as a critic to make any assessment on the skill of the writing; such things all come down to a manner of taste, and I can only attest that I like it!

Echo is a young woman born to a stunningly beautiful woman and an artist who only has eyes for her. Feeling suffocated by her angelic mother, Echo goes in search of vindication elsewhere, finding temporary fulfillment in the arms of a string of lovers, drugs and alcohol, dead-end jobs and painful beauty regimes — all the time searching for something to give her purpose and meaning. On the way she meets a range of characters; her lover Smoke who sacrificed everything to save the life of his daughter Eden, the vampiric Nina and Mark who set their sights on Echo, and of course her own parents who must deal with their failing battle against cancer.

Alongside fantasy elements such as angels, vampires and fairies are serious issues such as drugs, sex, prostitution and anorexia, all of which are intertwined into a twisted, fairytale version of Los Angeles that Block paints as both a paradise and a hellish dungeon. Continuously haunted by the memories of the angel who saved her from the ocean, Echo finally must find completion in the discovery of her true self and in making peace with her inner demons.

A risk here is of the story being all style and no substance, made especially confusing by having to keep track of Block's secondary characters and the changing points of view. When it comes to a writer as unique as Block, this all comes down to personal taste and whether her writing style appeals to you personally. If analysed carefully, it is true that there is very little meat to the story; as always Block is more interested in personal development and word-play. However, I do feel that this is not Block's best work, for several reasons.

As mentioned, there are too many characters vying for the spotlight and as such cannot make an impact on the reader due to the short amount of time each is given. With this in mind, the amount of time in which the story takes place is also rather muddled; Eden goes from an infant to a teenager within the space of a few paragraphs, though none of the other characters seem to age or change in any significant way during this time passage. Finally, Echo herself is a rather frustrating heroine. There is nothing truly tragic about her life (though she has enough presence of mind to admit this to herself), and so her self-abuse comes across as rather self-pitying. Her long line of failed romances gets tedious after awhile — by the time we get to Valentine, I'd had enough. Finally, I also felt it was a little strange that Echo's journey of self-discovery ends with her falling into the arms of yet another boy; wouldn't it been more true to the novel's purpose to have Echo simply be happy with herself?

And yet for all of this, the first thing I did once I'd finished the book was turn to the start and read it all again. Despite its flaws, there is something undeniably attractive about Francesca Lia Block's books. Try one and see for yourself.   —Rebecca   Comments

Ruby — (2006) With Carmen Staton. Young adult. Publisher: Ruby is a Midwestern girl named for the jewel that is believed to ward off evil spirits. Ruby's special gift is a sixth sense that makes her at one with nature and gives her the ability to know her own destiny. After growing up in an abusive family, Ruby escapes to Los Angeles and learns of her soulmate — Orion — a British actor. She travels to England, where she works at a potions and herbs shop, and through a series of coincidental circumstances, ends up nursing Orion back to health without confessing that she has been on a quest to find him all along. But just when she thinks her dream is becoming a reality, Ruby is stopped in her tracks by the violent demons of her past. Only by facing the darkness together can she and Orion finally fulfill their destiny.

Psyche in a Dress — (2006) Publisher: But this is what I could not give up: I could not give up myself. Psyche has known Love — scented with jasmine and tasting of fresh oranges. Yet he is fleeting and fragile, lost to her too quickly. Punished by self-doubt, Psyche yearns to be transformed, like the beautiful and brutal figures in the myths her lover once spoke of. Attempting to uncover beauty in the darkness, she is challenged, tested, and changed by the gods and demons who tempt her. Her faith must be found again, for if she is to love, she must never look back.

The Waters and the Wild — (2009) Young adult. Publisher: When Bee woke up, there was a girl standing in her room. "You are me," the girl said. Then she was gone. I am a thirteen-year-old double Gemini. I get bad grades, write poetry with my left hand, dance in my room, surf the net. I Google images of the tattoos my mom won't let me get. . . . But my world belongs to someone else. Someone who lives below the concrete of Los Angeles, someone with wild eyes and twigs in her hair. And I think she wants her life back.

Evidence of Angels — (2009) With Suza Scalora. Young adult. Publisher: Suza Scalora has been fascinated by fairy lore for as long as she can remember. She began her research while working in New York City as a commercial photographer. When the opportunity presented itself, Ms. Scalora set out to discover and capture images of the fairy world. In what became a yearlong expedition of epic — and at times perilous — proportions, she was finally able to prove something that she has known all along: Fairies are real.

Pretty Dead — (2009) Young Adult. Publisher: People pity me, but mostly they feel envy. I have all the luxury and freedom a girl my age could want. Something is happening to Charlotte Emerson. Like the fires that are ravaging the hills of Los Angeles, it consumes her from the inside out. But whether it is her eternal loneliness, the memory of her brother, the return of her first love, or the brooding, magnetic Jared — she cannot say. What if it's something more ... Something to do with the sudden tear in her perfect nails. The heat she feels when she's with Jared. The blood rushing once again to her cheeks and throughout her veins. For Charlotte is a vampire, witness to almost a century's worth of death and destruction. But not since she was a human girl has mortality touched her. In what way will you be transformed? Until now.