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Reading Update
May. 19th, 2006 09:51 amI just finished reading "I was a Teenage Fairy" (1998) by Francesca Lia Block, a fairly well-known novelist for the YA crowd. It took about two hours. Votes are in - I still don't like her writing style much. She uses third person present-tense, I think in an attempt to draw the reader in and make things seem more immediate, but I just find it annoying after a while.
The story is pretty standard YA fare: Girl(named Barbie) gets pushed into modeling by stage mom who is living through her; girl gets molested by photographer; girl meets hot actor-boy but has problems dating him because of previous molestation.
The thing that makes it different from your typical after-school-special kind of story is that the fairy of the title is real (Barbie calls her a "Mab"), and functions in a sort of Jimminy Cricket conscience role, encouraging Barbie to speak up for herself, learn photography, etc... The Mab is also about the size of Jimminy Cricket, as Block went with "Punk Tinkerbelle" as a model. And a fairy who drinks, cusses and refers to cute human boys as 'biscuits' is pretty amusing.
I also found Barbie's desire to become a photographer, born at the same time that she is being abused by one an interesting viewpoint. She seems to feel more abused by the camera itself than by the person, and therefore the way that she tries to empower herself is by taking on the role of the abuser - the camera.
And that's all I've got to say about that for now. More books later.
The story is pretty standard YA fare: Girl(named Barbie) gets pushed into modeling by stage mom who is living through her; girl gets molested by photographer; girl meets hot actor-boy but has problems dating him because of previous molestation.
The thing that makes it different from your typical after-school-special kind of story is that the fairy of the title is real (Barbie calls her a "Mab"), and functions in a sort of Jimminy Cricket conscience role, encouraging Barbie to speak up for herself, learn photography, etc... The Mab is also about the size of Jimminy Cricket, as Block went with "Punk Tinkerbelle" as a model. And a fairy who drinks, cusses and refers to cute human boys as 'biscuits' is pretty amusing.
I also found Barbie's desire to become a photographer, born at the same time that she is being abused by one an interesting viewpoint. She seems to feel more abused by the camera itself than by the person, and therefore the way that she tries to empower herself is by taking on the role of the abuser - the camera.
And that's all I've got to say about that for now. More books later.
