When I read Francesca Lia Block, I tend to go on a binge of her writing, catching up on everything that has been released/acquired by local libraries since the last Block binge. A chance wander into the young adult section at the library and I happened upon the slight Blood Roses, very likely setting myself up for another rampage of her dreamy prose. Blood Roses is composed of brief glimpses at the lives of a group of very loosely connected evolving young women. Block’s signature chimerical prose takes us through these moments of transformation imagined as supremely powerful and magical.
Essentially modern day parables of adolescence, Block introduces mythological elements – centaurs, fairies, angels, aliens, and such - into everyday adolescent lives in order to articulate their various struggles. A boyfriend imagined as an alien with supernatural powers over his paramour. An abused daughter who sees Death taking home in her dollhouse. A grieving young man meeting a young fairy to escape from his pain. A girl who finds herself transforming into a giant after her first kiss.
What shall we do, all of us? All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, our watermelon hearts?
I’m not usually into such fantastical elements in my fiction, but the way Block writes about them makes it possible to read them as allegorical, imagined in order to cope with the stresses of life. Her prose is so luxurious and sumptuous, so based in the natural amid a chaotic mechanical modern world. It’s not a style that is for everyone (and I myself wouldn’t be able to only read this sort of writing), but it is brilliantly evocative, even when talking about admiring the scars of the clipped wings of (well, possibly) an angel. I think that is where the power of Block’s writing lies, in an ultimate belief in the possible and the power of perception.
2008, Blood Roses, book review, February 2010, fiction, Francesca Lia Block