Echo [Library Binding]

Francesca Lia Block (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2001

Maybe I would become a mermaid....I would live in the swirling blue-green currents, doing exotic underwater dances for the fish, kissed by sea anemones, caressed by seaweed shawls. I would have a dolphin as a friend. He would have merry eyes and the thick sleeked flesh of a god. My fingernails would be tiny shells and my skin would be like jade with light shining through it. I would never have to come back up...

Echo is caught at the crossroads of a physical world full of hope and despair and the realm of the supernatural, where young men have wings and skeletons speak. On the way, she is graced by angels and fairies and haunted by ghosts, psychopomps, and vampires. But as Echo falls under the spell of demons who threaten to destroy her, she must ultimately look within to find the strength to survive.

Through shifting points of view, Francesca Lia Block weaves pure magic into this deftly constructed tale -- a novel told in the form of linked stories. One girl's life emerges from a tapestry of voices, lives, and loves -- lost and found -- that deliver her finally to herself, triumphant, ever-changing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Part myth, part dream, and all enchantment, Francesca Lia Block has blessed her glitter fans with another darkly fantastical tale of Los Angeles, "a city of magicians, movie queens, love-struck clowns." On this particular magic carpet ride, Block follows the sad footsteps of Echo, a Hollywood baby born of a dark-souled artist father and an effervescent mother whose impossible beauty likens her to an angel. Echo, who believes that "the only things I know how to do well are shoplift, kiss and dance," feels excluded from her extraordinary parents' perfect love for each other. So she sets out alone to try and fill the cavernous void inside. During her travels, Echo meets a broken angel, iron-pumping vampires, and the fairy daughter of a rock star. Are these figures real? Echo believes in them, and so will the reader, as Block's melodious prose leaves no choice but to accept them as true. Echo finally finds her own true "love-boy" when she learns to look for love within instead of searching for validation through her drugs of choice: food, sex, or doomed relationships. Told in a myriad of voices that belong to Echo, her parents, lovers, and friends, these interconnected short stories are a visual feast of intoxicatingly hip images where the city of Los Angeles is as much a character as the outrageous people that populate its movie-star mansions. Echo's story of salvation will appeal not only to eyeliner-wearing club kids, but to any older teen who's ever felt insecure and lonely in a world full of kissing couples and Hallmark holidays. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Block (The Rose and the Beast) moves to a new level of complexity without sacrificing accessibility for this exquisitely wrought coming-of-age story. The subjects, settings and semi-magical tone will be familiar to Block's readers as Echo, an artistic L.A. teenager, overcomes various forms of rejection in her search for selfhood and true love. Echo lives among angels, false and true, mythic and real, among them Echo's mother, whom Echo thinks is perfect but who appears blind or impervious to her daughter's needs; a famous-artist father whose love for his wife seems to leave no room for Echo; girls Echo wishes she could be; and a nameless, wounded boy who saves Echo from drowning and whose memory sustains Echo as she meets men incapable of loving her. As in previous works, death hangs heavily over the heroine: parents die young, vampires prey on the innocent, children fight terrible disease. Block's structure and imagery, however, manifest a new sophistication and subtlety, as passages and metaphors "echo" one another throughout. She delicately shifts the narrative to show different partners (the heroine's grandparents; the lovers of Echo's friends; a sibling pair) facing similar conflicts, but she quietly varies the individuals' responses. Lyrical passages, such as Echo's descriptions of her mother's extraordinary beauty ("She is like the da Vinci Madonna with a crescent moon hung on her mouth") ripple beneath Echo's life-and-death struggles. This begs not just to be read, but to be reread, and savored. All ages.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  
• Library Binding: 224 pages
• Publisher: Joanna Cotler Books (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060281286
• ISBN-13: 978-0060281281
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,237,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Francesca Lia Block, recipient of the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award. has been publishing novels, short stories, essays, memoirs and poetry since 1989. Her work has been translated into many languages. Ms. Block lives in Los Angeles where she teaches writing workshops that are also available online.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the best of Block but still wonderful, November 18, 2001

By 

"ziggyz_queen" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Echo (Hardcover)

Block is a literary genius and my favorite writer; therefore, this book cannot be bad. However, this is not her best.

This book is written as a journey of self-discovery, centered around Echo, a young girl growing up in the shadow of her goddess-like mother. Her life is spent trying to shed that shadow and become a person in her own right. The book interweaves chapters of Echo's life with chapters telling the stories of the main figures in her life. This is an interesting device that works here.

Something that more intense Block fans will notice is that the chapter of this book revovling around Echo's health obsession is drawn, sometimes verbatim, from Block's short story Blood Oranges.

Although good, this is not Block's best. If you're starting out, read Girl Goddess #9 or I Was A Teenage Fairy.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Echo"s of "The Damned", April 9, 2003

By 

Chosroes III (NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Echo (Hardcover)

The opening chapter of "Echo", written in the voice of its protagonist, is fresh, colorful, and fetching. Teenaged Echo has a too-perfect mother and a father who ignores her, but she's also got one outrageous superpower! Unfortunately, Echo soon fades into the hills as the narrative momentum is lost in a succession of narrators, considerable lapses of time, and just too many turns of the merry-go-round. One thing that impresses itself on me in this book is how close Block is coming to Anne Rice in her decline. To wit: an endless cast of characters, all offered for our approval based pretty much upon the evidence of cool names, exotic artistic tastes, and a sense of fashion. Multiple narrators, as noted. Situations that seem to exist for the sake of how poetically they can be evoked. Time and place gone increasingly opaque. As for concrete examples?: well, there are vampires for one thing. And a wee little girl starts revamping fairy tales in a manner that suggests she has been reading the Sleeping Beauty trilogy for bedtime!
I'm still susceptible to Block's charms, and "Echo" does have some powerful moments, particularly in two disturbing chapters that show the dangerous, sexual lure of dark beings who seek to entrap our heroes. But the novel feels, at times, plodding, marking time almost. The travails of Smoke and Eden become, at their worst, pure kitsch: Block comes darn close to the ridiculousness of Little Nell in one emotive scene. And, well past what feels like a logical culmination point, the book is still floating through Echo's endless search for-- er, self-worth? The Valentine chapters feel a little too coy about Echo's feelings for her. And, while the finale does have poetic uplift, it's not as glorious as "Violet & Claire"s climax-- it's more of a relief just to be through with it. And, after all the bad lovers, anorexia, sexual predators, etc., should we really believe that magic exists in underground clubs? Isn't it time to let these heroines get out of the smog and search for Art and Love someplace else? This Joycean hangup with trashy, flashy L.A. may be getting a bit much, and really, it's not the least toxic environment for creative young people to try and flourish in. Read "Echo" for the shimmery poetic images, but go back to the earlier ones for emotional depth and dramatic release.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful, orginal, creative tale, September 12, 2001

By 

Nancy E. "Nancy" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Echo (Hardcover)

Echo tells the story of a girl and all the people around her in a beautiful writing that is purely Block's style. Echo is a girl who is convinced that she is not very pretty and the only things she has talent in is evil. But that proves to be wrong when series of tests in love, friendship, and death face her. Through this heart-filled painful period Echo learns from her mistakes and how to look towards the future. This book tells her story.

WHen I picked this up I was a little iffy about it. WHile I do enjoy Francasca Lia Block's wiritng style I either love her books, or could do with out them. THis book was not a dissapointment for me. The story is wonderful, symbolic, and poetic. I'd love to read more by Block. I reccomend this to anyone who dosen't mind strange but entertaining tales and who's a fan of Blocks writing.

On another note.... Peace and prayers to all the victims of the recent plane accident. My heart is with everyone affected.