Emily's Musings

YA1b: Dangerous Angels

Dangerous Angels
Francesca Lia Block
New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, c1998.
478 pages

This is a collection of five short books in one, including Weetzie Bat, so I didn't think it could count as a separate entry in set of YA books for class (but after reading the first one last week I knew I had to read everything else in the series immediately). Its wonderful and I could barely put it down. The first book, "Weetzie Bat", is still my favorite but the others add depth to the characters and show more love and loss and magic and all the other things I loved about the first one. Three of the other stories are about Weetzie's daughter Cherokee and her almost-daughter Witch Baby ("Witch Baby", "Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys", "Missing Angel Juan".) The final piece, "Baby Be-Bop," tells the story of Weetzie's friend Dirk. There are angels and ghosts, genies and magic spirits, but it feels somehow both real and solid at the same time. I love the writing style - it feels like it dances off the page.

I'm still very taken with this description of Weetzie's first kiss with her true love, My Secret Agent Lover Man (that's really his name).

A kiss about apple pie a la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat. A kiss about chocolate, when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year. A kiss about palm tress speeding by, training pink clouds when you drive down the String sizzling with champagne. A kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like teams all over your legs." (p. 29)

I've already made some of you read that (sorry) since I've been carrying the book around and showing that passage to anyone who asks me what I'm reading...

I love their crazy unconventional loving family, the food, the flowers, the clothing, the names, the words they use... I was definitely swept away by it.