Adorable. Not much like I expected (although I don't know what I expected), but very cute and fun and emotional, and a quick read to boot. I can see it's one of those books you can keep coming back to and find new things in.

I was unable to prevent myself from casting Mel as Weetzie. Heh. ( )

Ugh

I read this in one sitting (which isn't hard. It's only 88 pages,) and was surprised to find that I actually thought it was pretty good! I admit I went into it with low expectations because I had heard negative things from multiple people, but I found it to be an appealing, purposely shallow fairy tale. Would read more of hers. ( )

I've been a Francesca Lia Block fan for years without having ever read what is probably her most popular book, Weetzie Bat. And I loved this so, so much. It's basically a modern day fairy tale, but structured in reverse. Most fairy tales start with some awful thing happening to the protagonist. They then go on a journey and things usually get better from there. This is set up in reverse in where only good things happen to Weetzie Bat from the start, her life is so amazing, so magical and filled with nothing but love. It is 100% fantasy. She is not supposed to be real and grounded. Halfway through the book though, real life starts to intrude on the fairy tale. Fear, infidelity, drug abuse, death, a fucking AIDS epidemic, etc. But it maintains its fairy tale format by 1) maintaining the fast-paced storytelling and 2) keeping this silly little family together. The hard times don't completely break them. They grieve and they move on, together. It's really rather sweet and admirable...which is the whole point of a fairy tale: to model the values we'd most like to see in ourselves and others. This little novella is so simply about love and forgiveness, but I could probably spend hours talking about it. ( )

I should have just stuck with [b:Baby Be-Bop|71331|Baby Be-Bop (Weetzie Bat, #5)|Francesca Lia Block|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390274115s/71331.jpg|1506] and my useless memory of reading this book in high school. This was much too precious for me. Only My Secret Agent Lover Man had any sense whatsoever. Plus, holy cultural appropriation! Weetzie Bat and her friends are the most oblivious hipsters of all time, and I can totally see why I would have liked this book when I was 13...everyone is an idiot except me, no one understands these amazing things that I understand...This precious group of kids has looked outside their gingerbread house and seen bad things, so they live in their tiny happy bubble that no one understands, and when they do happen to get a whiff of something real, they can't handle it. Duck's friend has AIDS...that's awful. Instead of being there for him, because we learn that Duck never went to the hospital, he decides to run away to San Francisco and drink because it made him realize that we can kill each other by loving each other. Dirk drives off to find him while Weetzie and MSALM stay at home with their creepy babies and when D&D come back they all just hug each other and gaze lovingly into each other's eyes and I guess who cares that Bam Bam is still in the hospital? His illness is such a nice plot point for our main characters.

Plus there's this crap:
"'That's a great outfit,' Dirk said. Weetzie was wearing her feathered headdress and her moccasins and a pink fringed mini dress. 'Thanks. I made it,' she said, snapping her strawberry bubble gum. 'I'm into Indians,' she said. 'They were here first and we treated them like shit.' 'Yeah,' Dirk said, touching his Mohawk."

They named their baby Cherokee.
"Cherokee looked like a three-dad baby, like a peach, like a tiny moccasin, like a girl love-warrior who would grow up to wear feathers and run swift and silent through the L.A. canyons."

I think it's worth noting that none of the characters are Native. ( )