Customer Reviews

Weetzie Bat

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

You've got to be a very particular type of person to love the book "Weetzie Bat". The right reader is the one who is (or once was) into the quirky, crazy, and bizarre. Anyone who's ever felt at any time that sometimes life is just too darn frumpy should read this story. For me, "Weetzie Bat" won me over when its protagonist and her best friend went to see "The Girl Can't Help It" starring Jayne Mansfield. Any book that mentions that splendid splendid movie (it's right up there with "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?") has my unequivocal love. If you like books that create little worlds where reality is rarely fixed and true love conquers all (eventually) then you'll enjoy taking a wild and wacky run through the insatiable "Weetzie Bat".

Weetzie lives in L.A. and has just met a very cool guy named Dirk. The two are perfectly suited for one another in every way. Dirk wears his hair in a black mohawk and drives a '55 Pontiac. Weetzie sometimes wears feathered Indian headdresses and sometimes makes her clothes out of kids' bed sheets. Together they paint the town red and have wonderful times. When Dirk confesses to Weetzie that he's gay she's delighted. Now the two can go Duck hunting. But finding the right Duck is hard, and after too many bad dates and bad Ducks (which is pretty much the same thing) the two feel bad. Weetzie's one goal is to find her Secret Agent Lover Man. Then, one day unexpectedly, she's given three wishes. After being told that world peace and "a million more wishes" never really work she wishes for a Duck for Dirk, a Secret Agent Lover Man for herself, and a house for them all to live happily ever after in. When the wishes start coming true, things start getting REALLY interesting.

Author Francesca Lia Block is a big fan of sentences that use the word "and". Here's a typical Block sentence: "They all lived together and wore red and ate plantain and black beans, or wonton soup and fortune cookies, and made silkscreened clothing they sold on the boardwalk at Venice beach". She's a fan of the extravagant explanation and the outrageous description. If you're reading this book in the right mood, they're great. I found myself loving portions of this book, much to my surprise. Consider the following sentences, appearing after Weetzie gets a really good kiss: "A kiss about apple pie a la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat. A kiss about chocolate, when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year. A kiss about palm trees speeding by, trailing pink clouds when you drive down the Strip sizzling with champagne".

In the end, this book's just a big ole love letter to Los Angeles and teenage dream worlds. I can see why it's so popular and I can see it getting the same kind of audience as those people who loved, "Boy Meets Boy". For anyone who thinks they're just a little different from everyone else and that's a-okay, this book is for them. It's "Stargirl" all grown up. Some people need some magic in their lives. "Weetzie Bat"

delivers that magic hand over fist.

What a bizarre read! I had no idea that young adult fiction like this existed when I was a teenager, but I'm really glad to know that it does. Homosexuality, single parenthood, non-traditional families...how this book could make it onto the bookshelves in these conservative times of ours is beyond me, but it gives me hope, and really makes me admire the courage of the author. While I think that other readers in their twenties, like me, would enjoy the whimsical writing style and charming story, I think this would be a great book for younger readers (probably grades 6 and up). It conveyed the messages of acceptance, unconditional love, compassion for others, and the bonds of love and family that we create with our friends more beautifully than a lot of more serious texts I have read. Fabulous!

Block's Weetzie Bat books are the ultimate in teenage rebellion, and have won all kinds of "best for reluctant readers" awards. They're modern-day Los Angeles magical realism, simultaneously gritty, au courant, absurdly impossible---and beautiful. And funny. And tragic. I'm always cautious about recommending them unless the parents are involved in the reading process, because of certain could-be-threatening plot twists (babies out of wedlock, gay heroes, Wiccan references), but they're terrifically interesting and accessible books, once you get into Block's flowing, lyrical, off-the-wall writing style.

One of the strong underlying themes of the entire series is the seeking out and assembling of alternative families, in place of the dysfunctioning genetic family. And there are a great many conservative adults out there who don't really want teenagers to become aware that this is possible...

I absolutely love Block. I read this book in one hour. Block has a talent for weaving the supernatural with the modern world. It's like you know this magic could never happen, yet her writing keeps you believing it's happening as you are turning the pages. This novel allowed me to escape to a world that could never be, and I absolutely loved it!

Last spring break I read I Was a Teenage Fairy while in Ireland and thought it was amazing. Although Weetzie Bat was mentioned on the back cover, I must admit that I was wary of reading it because of its ridiculous sounding name! Eventually I came around, which is lucky, because Weetzie Bat was a life changing experience.

Weetzie Bat is an amazing book. Its like being high/having a really good trip. Reading it made me want to be IN the story, and to write one just as enchanting as it. Weetzie and her magical menagerie have earned a permanent place not only on my bedside table, but also in my heart! (Cheesy.)

Weetzie Bat is amazing partly because it is a novel about serious issues disguised as a light, easy read. Do not be fooled by the pink cover or the whimsical characters, issues in the book include, but are not limited to, : AIDs, homosexuality, death, and drug addiction/alcoholism. READ WEETZIE BAT!

I first read Weetzie Bat in 9th grade....and I was almost shocked by how good it was. I know the book's not especially realistic, but it was one of the first I'd ever read that dared to be honest enough to say that sex can be both an enjoyable, natural thing, as well as an incredibly scary, dangerous thing...that someone who's gay could be a kind, funny, foolish normal person...things I'd always sort of suspected, but that no one had ever told me. Besides, even if all that stuff still bothers you, Francesca Lia Block's style is just to incredible to pass up....I don't know how to describe it, but her prose is just so rich and original, you can almost taste it...

Grade 10 & up - Once upon a time in the glitter and glitz of Shangri-L.A, lived a girl in her early twenties. Weetzie was a skinny girl with a bleach-blonde flat-top. With her best friend, Dirk, his ?55 Pontiac, Jerry, and her dog Slinkster Dog, she had lots of fun. But something was missing. With the help of Grandma Fifi?s magic lamp, they set about finding their soul mates. They find their true loves, but they'll have to overcome many obstacles before they reach their happily ever after. Weetzie Bat is a modern fairy tale with an offbeat and unforgettable cast of characters. Block?s novel is full of lyrical style, transcendent themes, imaginatively realized setting, and innovative blending of magic and realism. The author brings an artist?s eye and a poet?s sensibility to her unforgettable story of teenagers coming of age in a time when love is a ?dangerous angel?. This novel offers more insight into love, compassion, and tolerance than many books four times its length. (It's a mere 88 pages.)

"Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man and Dirk and Duck and Cherokee and Witch Baby and Slinkster Dog and Go-Go Girl and the puppies Pee Wee, Wee Wee, Teenie Wee, Tiki Tee, and Tee Pee were driving down Hollywood Boulevard on their way to the Tick Tock Tea Room for turkey platters."

Francesca Lia Block's "Weetzie Bat" tells of the title character's search for happiness through friends, family, stability and love. The 113 pages go by quickly, and the momentum of the story keeps going as Weetzie meets Dirk, who meets Duck, then meets My Secret Agent Lover Man, who leaves when Weetzie, Dirk and Duck decide to have a baby. While MSALM is gone, he joins up with a coven and has a baby with a witch, who later drops the child off at the house where all the characters live. Duck disappears to San Francisco in response to a friend's having AIDS, Dirk goes after him and brings him back, and they all live happily ever after. Amidst all of this are Dirk's groovy grandmother dying and leaving them her house, and Weetzie's bi-coastal parents bemoaning their lost love and father Charlie Bat's suicide.

This book was written in 1989 and was well-regarded by the NY Times and LA Times Book Reviews, the Village Voice, and Publishers Weekly. The edition I read was a 1999 10th Anniversary Edition. So I take it that this book is somewhat of a milestone in this particular style of writing. It is somewhat edgy in referring indirectly to sexual intimacy and even more indirectly to AIDS. Block has several other works, including some that tie in with this book and its characters. I can appreciate Block's creating a stable of characters that YA from the late 80s-early 90s could follow and relate to, just as post-war YA could follow and relate to J.D. Salinger's Glass Family and Holden Caulfield. Where "Weetzie Bat" fails is in its name-dropping and self-congratulatory hipness, which makes its characters and their lives insincere Xeroxes of important characters from a more honest book.

Having graduated as a theatre major in 1990, I remember all of the retro-punk chic that is endlessly referred to in "Weetzie Bat," from '55 Pontiacs and L.A.-specific and other pop culture and icons of days gone by, to unique clothing and decoration that became so mainstream that the people who bought into it became (to borrow from "Seinfeld") hipster doofuses. I enjoy culture from decades previous more than I do today's, but I have the sense not to live in a bubble of self-reverential attitude. Block is quoted as having come up with her characters' names from her "rampaging subconscious." This is as counterfeit-cool as her hazy and mannered author photo. While an interesting fable-cum-fairy tale for YA 13 to 17, "Weetzie Bat" is a great primer for what Holden Caulfield would call "phonies."

http://www.harperchildrens.com/flblock/

The first time I read Weetzie Bat was at a very young age, and really too young for the subject matter at hand. The writing might lead you to think otherwise as it is really written at a 6th grade or lower level. Publisher's Weekly says its perfect for 12 and up, the School Library Journal says 10th grade and up. See the disparity?

Weetzie Bat was Francesca Lia Block's first novel and the first in her Dangerous Angels series. I wanted to re-read it to capture some of the adventure and sparkle and hope I had gotten the first time around when I read it at the young age of 12. I was an outcast, a loner, a reader and a ridiculously creative dreamer (in the crazy sunshine and rainbows way, though if you are here reading this at my blog you probably already knew that). I still got some of that magic, but now I'm older and not all of it managed to keep its hold. As an adult there were some problems, some hitches, some flaws. Mainly my naivete is gone and with it went a lot of my original enjoyment of the book.

In this book we have a cast of characters that kind of float through life in a series of moments, each chapter is almost like a short story, with little conflict and hardly any character development. We have characters with silly nick names who, when faced with life's problems, pretend they don't exist with alcohol, music, food, shopping and when that doesn't work they run away and hide - in bars, in exotic dens - where they smoke, drink and have promiscuous sex with strangers. For the most part though there are no consequences to their actions, no "bad" ones anyway. Seriously bad things are hinted at. Relatives OD and die, friends get AIDs and die, but the main characters live in a bubble where they cruise around and party and make movies and dress up and love each other and while they are affected it's not really given any weight with the reader.

As an adult reading the book I also was bothered at the complete lack of real growing up the characters do. They don't worry about money, about getting an education, about a career, their main concerns are finding love and holding on to it once they have it. An admirable aim to be sure, but not to be gotten at the sacrifice of other people's happiness (even if that is done through short sightedness, not malice). When Weetzie wants a baby she asks her lover and when he turns her down she turns to her gay friends and has a threesome with them behind his back in order to get pregnant. This results in the lover running away when he finds out, of course, because none of these people can handle having adult conversations or making adult decisions. As a child this all made perfect sense to me. I had the same naivete as Weetzie displays and figured that a child is born of love and as long as they all love each other (and they all do in the end, even the additional illegitimate child that the lover had with some random stranger when he ran away) then it is all okay.

I hate to put this book in such a negative light because when I was a young teenager this book, and the series after it, was like a life line to me. I wanted to be loved more than anything and having that be Weetzie's sole pursuit, concern, and end result made perfect sense to me then. I loved reading the flowery prose and the crazy nick names. I loved reading about the wonderful magical place that is Los Angeles, which is written to be even more magical then it is, or ever was. (I went there on a sort of pilgrimage when I was 17 - true story.) But this book doesn't hold up to the hard cold light of adulthood. I think it works for the young and the young at heart if you want to just dive into a world of magic and light and crazy food/clothes/streets/people/experiences. But not too young, I don't think. I'm not so sure it should be read when you're 12, and I was 12 when I first read it!

"Weetzie Bat" is about a young girl who just wants to be happy and how she comes to find that happiness. I was completely thrown off by this book. I've been reading fiction from a very young age and the disheveled and somewhat juvenile story telling style kind of confused me. The writing is vaguely reminiscent of a young girl's ramblings of how she wishes her life would go. Some things are never explained and time doesn't really have a place in this book. All that aside, I loved the book. It was a quick fast read with a heartwarming main character. Weetzie is who I always wanted to be growing up and I think many young girls would be able to identify with her. The book is an easy read and doesn't have too much mature content. There are a few sex parts, but nothing is gone into detail. There are little or no cuss words in the book; at least I didn't notice any. Reading this book felt almost like a dream and the indefinite writing style helped with that. It's a book you could imagine yourself in. The author doesn't give too much description so you can imagine everything for yourself and that's part of the beauty of the book. It doesn't demand anything. It's a simple book with some beautiful characters that simply love and want to be loved in return. I would recommend this to any girl 15 and up. It would be a great book for someone who doesn't have the biggest vocabulary or has a hard time reading. It definitely catches the attention and the heart.