Amazon.com Review
Once upon a time, in the bubble-gum-snapping, glitter polish-wearing, lip-gloss-applying San Fernando Valley, a gentle girl named Barbie met a feisty fairy named Mab: "Maybe Mab was real. Maybe there really are girls the size of pinkies with hair the color of the darkest red oleander blossoms and skin like the greenish-white underbellies of calla lilies.... But it doesn't matter if Mab is real or imagined, Barbie thought, as long as I can see her." Mab, with her crabby commentary and no-holds-barred opinions, gives Barbie the strength she needs to face the horrors casting a shadow over her life in sunny, shimmering California. How else could Barbie survive her over-perfumed, over-tanned, overbearing stage mother, dragging her daughter to modeling agencies in the gold-plated hope of reliving her younger days as a beauty queen? Or the "cadaver-pale skin" and "fleshy mouth" of Hamilton Waverly, the "crocodile pedophile" photographer who makes Barbie feel "like the doll she had been named for, without even a hole where her mouth was supposed to be"? Mab glimmers and gabs by Barbie's side throughout her teen years as she becomes a successful fashion model, falls in love, and endures all the troubles that come along for the ride--in addition to facing the black secret of her past.
Francesca Lia Block, author of the magical Weetzie Bat books that are collected in Dangerous Angels, and the empowering, punchy Girl Goddess #9, has once again crafted a mystical tale whose ethereal, original language will wrap readers in its gossamer grip. Block carries us to the weeping heart of despair, but would never be so cruel as to leave us there: Barbie gets a new, skyward-gazing name, Selena Moon, and readers get a glimmersome vision of living happily ever after. (Ages 13 and older) --Brangien Davis
From Publishers Weekly
This disarming new book by the ever-inventive Block (the Weetzie Bat books) seems at once more fantastic and more of a YA "problem novel" than her previous titles. At about the same time that her ex-beauty queen mom pushes her into modeling, 11-year-old BarbieAnamed after the dollAmeets Mab, an acid-tongued, winged beauty: "a teenage girl-thing who was the size of most teenage girls' littlest fingers." Block proposes different ways to understand Mab: "Maybe Mab was real... Maybe not. Maybe Mab was the fury. Maybe she was the courage. Maybe later on she was the sex." In any event, Mab's friendship sustains Barbie after she is molested by a prominent photographer, a violation her mother aggravates by turning her head the other way. The novel jumps ahead five years, when Barbie has a flourishing career as a model but is stunted emotionally and artistically (she wants to be a photographer but can't summon the creative energy). Here the characters and settings will be familiar to the author's fans: a glamorous would-be boyfriend with a profoundly sympathetic gay best friend; impossibly hip restaurants and clubs; a house converted from a legendary Hollywood hotel. Barbie finally overcomes her psychic wounds by unmasking the predatory photographer; in this section, Block compares Barbie and Mab to comic book superheroes, and in fact, they behave with an exaggerated flatness, as if the author were squeezing them into a happy ending one or two sizes too small. Elsewhere, however, the writing is among Block's supplest. The prose, less obviously lush than in previous books, sustains steady crescendos of insight. This fairy tale is too pointedly a social critique to be entirely magical, but its spell feels real. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
