Necklace of Kisses

"It's been so extraordinary," said Weetzie. "And I never use that word! Like a magical-realist book or a Fellini movie. I haven't this way in about ten years."

One of the remarkable things about reading almost any Francesca Lia Block novel is the way she is able to make Los Angeles and the Hollywood Hills seem to appear as a place of genuine magic. In spite of what we tend to know better, about smog and violence, pollution and a typically unromantic city, Block is able to make it beautiful.

The book is sequel of sorts of Block's Dangerous Angels series, featuring the punk-rock pixie Weetzie Bat and her diverse cast of friends, lovers and children. Weetzie, as heroine's go, is well meaning and kind. She is simple and self-involved the way most romantic heroine's are: her world is the only thing she needs to know about. But in Necklace of Kisses the world which she has carefully constructed is forced to confront reality. Her boyfriend of 20 years, Max, has spent the two years following September 11, 2001 in a deep funk, and it has literally drained their relationship of joy, love, and kisses. So Weetzie packs the essentials, thinking "what would Audrey [Hepburn] do?" and heads off to a pink hotel in search of her missing kisses. She is chasing a prom night memory, and isn't sure herself what she expects to find.

What does happen is possibly one of the first meta-magic-realism novels I've ever read. In her quest for discovery Weetzie meets a mermaid who has made herself into a Pamela Anderson look-a-like, she meets a fairy, a faun (named Pan, no less), an angel, a spider-woman, a genie and twelve dancing princesses. Many of the characters she meets are manifestations of references that Weetzie herself has made in previous chapters, and almost all of them are exactly what you expect them to be. With each kiss, Weetzie collects a physical gemstone (hence the title). There are very few surprises in Necklace of Kisses, but it doesn't make the book bad.

Necklace of Kisses is far from a perfect book. It is charming and sweet, and takes full advantage of the senses, like any good magic realism novel should. But Weetzie's own awareness of the magic realism aspects of the story in which she is involved are overwhelming, and almost make it not magic realism at all. The entire point of magic realism is that extraordinary things occur, and do not seem so impossible. By the end, Weetzie is resolved to the magic, however.

The book is an easy read, and is both fun and visceral. However a better option for those unfamiliar with Block's work would be to start with Dangerous Angels.

***.5 of *****
3.5 out of 5