Customer Reviews

Ruby: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I love Francesca Lia Block. To date I own almost everything shes written.

She has such a colorful language, and imagination. She truely brings you into the book as it youre really just a fly on the wall, but seeing it all happen for yourself instead of reading a story.

This book, unlike so many of her others dosent take place in Los Angeles, but she apparently still has the power to make any city magic.

What a magical, mystical read! Like all of Block's other books, this modern fairy tale combines harsh reality with transcendent beauty to create an uplifting and inspiring read.

The descriptions and places in the book helped transport me fully into Ruby's world, and the magical people and happenings kept me thinking about the book weeks after I closed it.

If you have liked Block's other work, you will love this. This book has the magic and untraditional romance of her Weetzie Bat books, and was wonderful to fall into at the end of the day.

I love this book. The ambiguity -- even about what is real and what is imagined -- is very engrossing and satisfying (not like a game that's designed by someone who knows more than you about the story like with some books). Empowering is so overused, but this book is truely empowering. It's like the main character, Ruby, is nurturing you, the reader. Some paragraphs are so simple and profound I had to read them again. And, I continued thinking about the narrators' wisdom the next day. I make it sound so serious, but actually this book is very entertaining and even sexy in places.

Maybe I'm not the target audience for this book (I'm 40), but the journey it took me on allowed me to be in my own teen/ young adult mind/ emotions -- in a good way, since I also have my 40-year old self to look on. So fun!!

Ruby is a wonderful little book that is quirky, mystical, but most of all, inspiring. The main character, Ruby, grows up in the Midwest in a family filled with secrets and lies. But her resilience and strength resounds throughout the book. She goes to England on a quest to find her soul mate--the man who will touch her inner being. I found this book to be beautifully written and touching. I think everyone that has inner demons should read it! I think everyone can relate to Ruby on some level and learn from her.'

I just finished Ruby, and while I enjoyed it in the way that I enjoy all of Francesca Lia Block's books I found it to be too similiar to her other book The Hanged Man.

There are a lot of similarities between the two books, right down the the tarot cards that appear in each one. While I was reading Ruby I had to try to keep the two books seperate in my head. It's almost like she wasn't quite satisfied with the story the first time around, so she rewrote it.

I'm giving it three starts because the book was still wonderful. It's full of Block's magic, hope and tenderness but like I said, it felt like a story she had already told.

i found this novel a little too short, and a little unreal. the mystical aspect of the novel was ok, but because it didn't have a real depth, and seemed to have been written in a rush (sorry, just felt like a long short story to me), it was hard for me to love the characters.
ruby was a darling, but really uneven. however, poor orlando bloom.. oops i mean orion woolf.. eh hem.. was so invisible i couldn't care for him at all.. tho i was glad she made his back better.
i love the genre, i love the lovely cover, i even nearly loved ruby... but this book was pretty weak.. i wanted to like it much more than i did.
(aaannndddd.. you really didn't disguise orlando very well, ladies... lol)

After a slew of unfortunate events wherein I read several disappointing books, I was inexplicably delighted to return to Francesca Lia Block's wonderful world, where pain and suffering can still be overcome by magic and love.

More often than not, I'll read one book by an author and love it, only to be disappointed with the author's other work. This is not the case with Block. I love everything she's written, and Ruby is no exception.

Some of the less positive reviewers felt that Ruby was different from Block's other work, and I agree with that to an extent. It seems more "grown up" than some of her earlier books, but that's ok, because I'm more grown up too. I first read "I was a Teenage Fairy" about ten years ago, so I enjoy the progression Block is making with her work. That said, I can understand how someone just discovering her Young Adult work wouldn't feel as strongly about Ruby. We should note (I didn't notice anyone else's reviews saying this) that this book was a co-project between Block and Carmen Staton, so that could account for some of the differences.

Anyway. I read this book in one day and already I'd like to read it again. Block has a way of describing seemingly normal things, like food, shops and forests, in a way that makes me feel completely intoxicated. I don't know how she does it; it's something I with I could do.

I love that Ruby decides at three years old that she isn't going to let her abusive father win. There are a lot of novels that deal with abuse, that have heroines who don't fight back (obviously, this is realistic-many victims have no idea how to fight back or feel they can't) but I think this type of heroine is incredibly important. People suffering similar situations might benefit from seeing a survivor of abuse stand up to her abuser, and find a way to transcend her past.

Ruby was a wonderful read that affected me on a deep level, more so even than Block's other books. I would highly recommend it.

francesca lia block is by far my favourite author. however, this is probably my least favourite of her books. i still enjoyed it, but the fact that it was written about orlando bloom, right down to him finding out who his real dad was when he was 13, and the sun tattoo, wasn't at all like block's usual style. and it was a bit too wiccan for my taste. usually her books are not about witches, they just have a vague sense of fantasy.

it's still worth reading, especially if you have any desire to marry orlando bloom.

This is a pretty nifty, slightly insane book. It is, essentially, this: Ruby comes from an abusive background, sees Troy on DVD, develops an obsession with Orlando Bloom (Orion), travels to England to surreptitiously gain the trust of his family, and somehow cause him to fall in love with her as she battles the demons of her past. All with Francesca Lia Block's edgy fairy tale qualities spun throughout.

Only it's not ever that easy. Although, I really do think Orion is Orlando Bloom. Ruby, who is desparate to escape a horrible family life, goes to England and seeks out Orion not because she's obsessed with him in a creepy fangirl way, but because she just happens to know a few things and why not her. I don't know whether to be amused by the simplicity of this idea, or take it up as my new life motto. Why not me? Indeed. Why not. Due to fiction's cute little conveniences, Ruby gets a job at the magic shop that Orion's mother owns, and Ruby starts coming over to Orion's parents' house for dinner, only Orion is never there. Cruel fates. But fiction has to go be convenient again and reveal that Orion has been there all the time, he's just in seclusion because he fell off of his horse and apparently broke his back in ways backs have never been broken. He's more or less paralyzed, but because the writing style isn't exactly explicit you're left to assume that.

Ruby has some ideas on how to fix this, so she magics him into wellness (and full body function) using paste and water. Magic paste and water! Orion takes a liking to Ruby, as we all knew he would. Ruby agonizes over the fact that she's basically built all of this on a lie, so she writes a book about her life (this stunned me a little, because she kept saying she'd use this book as a cover for why she's really there, and I had no idea she was actually writing it in the end) and what led her to England and sends it to Orion just as she leaves to go back to the States because her father died.

I can't even get into her father. That was a messed up situation that you know is horribly messed up all the way to the point where you're wincing and thinking "that's messed up" and Ruby is justified when she admits being scared out of her mind at the possibility that this guy would come back to haunt her (because in this world, ghosts are possible).

The strength of the story isn't Orion, or Ruby's trip to England to find Orion, but the backstory with her family. It's...just really messed up. You want her to find the ability to move on and become a new person and shed all of that awefulness. It's also beautifully told in a minimal sort of way. A little too short, and you sort of don't care about Orion given that he's hardly there and not nearly as important as the rest of the story. I liked it, despite some shortcomings.

This is one of my favourite FLB books and I've read everything by her except the last few released which are on my wish list. I love the simplicity of the story, the power Ruby finds in herself when she trusts in what she knows, and the ever present luminous FLB imagery. I was amused by the Orlando Bloom parallels and I did some googling after I finished the book! I don't feel the Orlando references take away from the book at all, but rather give a sense of hope and "anything is possible" to the story.