Francesca Lia Block’s books are in the category “Teens”, which is amusing because they are all about drugs, sex, alternative lifestyles, etc. So, controversial in other words. With Francesca it’s not about her stories….the stories are okay; post modern urban fairy tales you might say. Mostly it’s her characters that draw you in, with names like Rave, Jacaranda, Pixie and Pony and Winnie and Cubby. Skater boys with flat tops and androgynous girls with a penchant for falling in love with boys who turn out gay. These people are supercreative, making everything for themselves. But no, it’s not even the characters that make Francesca’s books total wonderlands: it’s the way she puts those damned words together. It’s the places she takes you: “Tonight, I’m at the club where Jacaranda and I used to hang.You take the stairs down beneath the pavement to a room with a low dragon-carved ceiling, red silk-fringed Chinese lanterns, a screen inlaid with peonies, bar of mahogany Buddhas. I’m wearing starry black thrift-shop lace, but even that feels too heavy in the cloying, prickly, woolly heat. All the tattooed-and -pierced ones are hanging out in the red-velvet booths drinking shiny martinis in lotus-shaped glasses or mai-tais decorated like Carmen Miranda hats. I walk around alone and wait.”

Her words make you want to dance, paint, write poetry, sing, sew your own clothes, and find yourself in the craziest weirdest way. I just love the way she writes, the words she uses, the worlds whe paints. She makes me want to go to California NOW.

9 stories about girls and their troubles, not as good as some of her other stuff, but still fantastic!

3/5
http://www.expage.com/jessysbooks