Weetzie Bat

Weetzie Bat and her best friend Dirk are two hip teens living in a fantastical, glittery, LSD-trippy LA. Dirk comes out to Weetzie when they're on the town, scoping for hunks, or Ducks as they're called, and then Dirk's hippy grandma gives Weetzie a magic lamp. Weetzie gets three wishes, a Duck for Dirk, A Secret Agent Lover Man for herself, and a cute little house that they can all live in, happily ever after.

Magically, all these wishes come true! Unfortunately, Weetzie decides she wants something else, a baby, but My Secret Agent Lover Man does not want one. He's too busy making his crazy movies and the world is too full of hate and sickness to have a baby. Weetzie has one anyway, a love-child with her two gay best friends. My Secret Agent Lover Man leaves the love nest, only to impregnate a witch, then he returns after Weetzie's baby, Cherokee Bat, is born. The witch curses My Secret Agent Lover Man and leaves her baby on the doorstep. Witch Baby is taken into the love nest to join the happy family.

After several more weird drug references, an AIDS scare, and other hipster trials, Weetzie goes to visit her dad in New York, begging him to come back to her mother in LA. He decides that LA is a crazy place and he never wants to go back, so much so that he kills himself. Everyone is sad and then the book is over.

This book was too much for me. I didn't understand half of it and it really bothered me. I'm a teenager, let's have a baby with no repercussions! We don't have jobs, but we do have a car and a house and babies and love! All you need is love! It's just too much! The fantasy elements were few and far between (a genie at the beginning and a witch at the end) and the entire book just seemed like an acid trip with all the colors and feathers and glitter and nonsense. There are so many other books I would recommend to my teens before I even thought about sharing this one with them.

The only part I did enjoy, however, was the arrival of the genie on page 26.

Weetzie could see him -- it was a man, a little man in a turban, with a jewel in his nose, harem pants, and curly-toed slippers.

"Lanky lizards!" Weetzie exclaimed.

"Greetings," said the man in an odd voice, a rich, dark purr.

"Oh, shit!" Weetzie said.

"I beg your pardon? Is that your wish?"

The Los Angeles Times Book Review says of Weetzie Bat, "One of the most original books of the last ten years."

Yes, it is original. The review didn't say good.

Block, Francesca Lia. 1989. Weetzie Bat. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0060205342