Violet and Claire FROM OUR EDITORS
Francesca Lia Block Gets Real
In the final pages of Francesca Lia Block's deftly written new novel, Violet and Claire, one of the main characters wonders to herself: "Maybe there had really been a kind of murder that night." This salient assertion comes from Violet, the whip-smart teen who, along with her friend Claire, wonders loudly about life. Besides forcing her characters to face big questions, this scene illustrates Block's current foray into storytelling in which events reflect a more hard-edged reality -- one where, if people are not physically dying, then, perhaps, their spirits are.
"Instead of genies and fairies, demons and lovers, it's very grounded in reality," Block said during a telephone conversation this past August. "It definitely has that tragic reality, and it's more plot-oriented than my other books." The 36-year-old author, whose widely acclaimed Weetzie Bat series for young adults has catapulted her to the top of the teen books scene, was forthcoming with her current interest in reality-driven storytelling.
Violet and Claire reads almost like a film script, which was originally the projected medium for the story. "I wanted to write a script, and I had a cool idea in my head," Block explains. "I woke up in the middle of the night and I typed 30 pages, and my legs were shaking -- it was really weird." The script-turned-book, however, still retains a scriptlike format ("fade in" and other stage directions are utilized throughout), and Block employs the Faulkneresque literary technique of shifting points of view. Hence, the book is divided into three sections: Part I is narrated in first person with Violet speaking; Part II is narrated in first person with Claire speaking; and Part III is told in third person through both Claire's and Violet's points of view, as well as through the narrator's.
Since her first book, Weetzie Bat, which she has referred to in many interviews as a "love letter to my friends and family," Block has had an intimate alliance with her characters. In Violet and Claire, she takes parts of herself and apportions them between the two main characters; in addition she draws on a real-life encounter to bolster Violet's character. "Violet is a very strong, forceful character, but there's some darkness to her," Block says. "She takes things very far. Claire has this ethereal quality, this sort of innocent, childlike quality, and both of them are seeking something that is missing in themselves." Curiously, toward the end of the story, Violet aptly renames herself Ambition and Claire Innocence. These are tools of the fable trade; both allegory and metaphor strongly inspire Block's work.
When the story begins, Violet, 17, is working on a screenplay she hopes to make into a film. In her first-person narrative, she shares her personal philosophies and practices: "And what else is filmmaking about if not a series of perfect and potent images strung together like the words of a poem?" Later in her monologue, we learn how she went from "wanting to save the world in sixth grade" to her "Goth" phase at 13, all the way up to her screenwriting venture, which came from years of studying storytelling and "renting two movies a night." Claire, on the other hand, is the flower of the two, the peace-loving, poetry-writing child whose fantastic dreams of making a living as a poet contrast with Violet's dreams of a life as a Hollywood screenwriter. Violet, Block says, was drawn mostly from a person she met through her recent encounters in L.A.'s film business, in which she is currently immersing herself.
As the story unfolds, Violet and Claire follow the path of their dreams, and a classic tale of lost innocence emerges; the reader, like the characters, may find herself asking moral questions. On their journey they meet the good and the bad: Richter, a Hollywood mogul; Tinker Bell, a potential character for Violet's screenplay; party girls Esmeralda and Mathilda; rocker Flint Cassady; and various lovers. "In my work I always try to work with dark and light, positive and negative, love and fear, magic and realism," Block says. "I try to include both of those things, not because I want to make a statement, but I believe in both those forces and that they are in this world."
If all this talk of good and evil and scripts and murder sounds like fodder for more adult-oriented novels, then it's correct to assume that Block's moniker as a teen author is somewhat miscalculated. Although she's been on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and has been given awards by the American Library Association and the New York Times Book Review, her place as a teen writer continues to be a cloudy issue for her. "I didn't write my first book for teenagers," Block says. "A lot of my readers are older because I think these issues are ongoing. I think also a lot of the positive things of being a young person are retained." Her most renowned books, such as Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and THe Hanged Man recount adolescent dilemmas while simultaneously addressing many of the same issues that adults encounter.
"When I say I write for young adults, I get people who say, 'When you write an adult book, let me know and I'll read it,'" Block says. "Does an adult book say 20 and up? It just limits it a little, and I try to avoid the label."
Discussing her following, Block refers to her fan mail, which accumulates regularly throughout the year. Many letters, Block says, come from people who may have read only a single novel she has written, but who have found her characters to be faced with many of the problems prevalent in their own lives. "I get letters from mostly young women, and they are so inspired," Block says. "They're incredibly smart, creative, humanistic, conscious, and some of the issues I struggled with, they've learned to deal with through communicating with each other. I'm encouraged by what I see -- they're very sophisticated; they are not jaded."
Of her own books, she feels closest to her first, Weetzie Bat, which she wrote while still an undergrad. But she is also proud of Missing Angel Juan and The Hanged Man for their "language and structure." Block works out of her home, which she shares with her husband and their dog, Vincent Van Go-Go Boots. Afternoons find her writing; in the morning, she exercises. On her reading list now are books by Barbara Gowdy, The White Bones and Mister Sandman. Also Joy Nicholson's The Tribes of Palos Verdes and Aimee Bender's Girl in the Flammable Skirt. Block adds: "I love Salinger. And I was really influenced by the surrealist writers of Latin America, like García Márquez."
If she weren't a writer, Block says, she'd probably be working as a psychologist for young people. And her secret ultimate fantasy is to be a modern dancer. But back in reality, Block is currently involving herself in L.A.'s film community, where she's making contacts and learning the trade of screenwriting so that -- you guessed it -- she can finish a screenplay she's working on. That, as well as thoughts about becoming a mother, has Block thinking about reality in the real world.
—Kevin Giordano
ANNOTATION
In search of material for a screenplay they are developing, seventeen-year-old Violet and her new friend Claire try to make life a movie as they chase their dreams through dangerously beautiful Los Angeles.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This is the story of two girls, racing through space like shadow and light. A photo negative, together they make the perfect image of a girl. Violet is the dark one, dressed in forever black, dreaming Technicolor dreams of spinning the world into her very own silver screen creation. Claire is like a real-life Tinker Bell, radiating love and light, dressing herself in wings of gauze and glitter, writing poems to keep away the darkness. The setting is L.A., a city as beautiful as it is dangerous, and within this landscape of beauty and pain Violet and Claire vow to make their own movie. Together they will show the world the way they want it to be, and maybe then the world will become that place—a place where people no longer hate or fight or want to hurt. But when desire and ambition threaten to rip a seamless friendship apart, only one thing can make two halves whole again—the power of love.
Francesca Lia Block's latest novel is a beautifully told story that boldly combines the world of film with the lyrical graceful language of poetry. The voices of two friends—one dark, one light—combine to tell a larger tale of love and loss, and the strength that comes from believing in dreams.
2000 Quick Picks for Young Adults (Recomm. Books for Reluctant Young Readers)
About the AuthorFrancesca Lia Block is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestsellers The Rose and The Beast, Violet & Claire, and Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat books, as well as I Was a Teenage Fairy, Girl Goddess #9, The Hanged Man, Echo, and Nymph. Her work has been translated into sevendifferent languages and is published around the world. She made her dazzling entrance onto the literary scene with her debut novel Weetzie Bat in 1989. Ms. Block lives in Los Angeles with her husband, her daughter and son, and Two Dogs.
FROM THE CRITICS
Christina Kelly - Jane
Violets and Claire captures the passionate nature of teenage friendship; her conversational style is easy to read; and the quirky characters are likable. It's a cute book, and it fits in your purse.
Publishers Weekly
Block (the Weetzie Bat novels) sets herself new challenges and meets them with consummate grace in this resonant novel. Violet and Claire, best friends, are polar opposites: Violet is angry and intense, with a fierce ambition to write and direct films; Claire is passive, attempting poetic transcendence of the casual cruelties of everyday life. Each girl gets what she thinks she wants. Violet, still in high school, lands a six-figure film deal, and Claire begins a romance with her poetry teacher. But these fulfilled dreams sour, and Violet and Claire become painfully estranged. In a triumphant finale, they embrace, aware that their relationship restores the balance missing in their separate personalities. The elements of the story--fairies, overnight fame, arts, sex and drugs, glamorous parties and, of course, the heady Los Angeles setting--are classic Block; the combination, however, is fresh and arresting, and her fans will applaud it. The narrative line is more pronounced than in previous works and, in another departure, provides a clear division between the fantastic and the real. The fairies, for example, belong to Claire's fantasy history of a lost race of "faeries" ("The patriarchy turned them into little insects," she explains to Violet). Cynical Violet and dreamy Claire alternate as narrators, projecting distinct voices that gradually come to resemble each other. Shedding a transformative light onto the often complex, sometimes dark nature of close friendships, Block's writing is as lush and luminous, as hip and wise as ever. Ages 10-up. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
KLIATT
To quote KLIATT's July 1999 review of the hardcover edition: Violet is dark, brooding, ambitious, and obsessed with movies. Claire is blond, frail, innocent, and obsessed with faeries and poetry. Seemingly opposites, the two high school girls are the best of friends, "two halves of a whole." They're planning to make a movie together, appropriately enough for two inhabitants of tawdry, gorgeous L.A. Claire sticks by Violet through her infatuation and one night stand with a sexy rock star, and her job for a creepy agent. Then Violet sells a screenplay for a lot of money, drops out of school, and finds cocaine. Claire takes a poetry class and falls in love with her teacher, but when he makes a pass at Violet, it threatens to destroy the relationship between Violet and Claire. Their bond, however, is strong enough to survive even this, and Violet brings about reconciliation in the desert. This emotionally charged novel by the popular author of Weezie Bat and other YA novels will please her many fans. It's a compelling tale told in three parts: the first from Violet's perspective, the second from Claire's, the last from a third-person perspective. The story is anything but light-hearted, but it's swiftly told and exciting to read. The cover, featuring two bare midriffs, is attention getting. For older YAs, because of sex, profanity, drug use. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, HarperCollins/Joanna Cotler Books.170p, 18cm, 99-23890, $6.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Paula Rohrlick; November 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 6)
School Library Journal
Gr 9 Up-Behind the glossy hipness and lush sensory detail that characterize Block's fiction, her fans will find here the sad story of the friendship between two teens. Violet remembers the tough, excited kid she was in sixth grade, the one who wanted to be president, and the one who entered junior high, became Vile, and wanted to die. Her love for movies and her passion to write screenplays save her and connect her to Claire, an ethereal poet with gauze wings sewn on the back of her shirt. They become instant friends, but the outside world intrudes. Violet is bedded by a rock star, who sends her on to a job as a girl Friday for a screen agent, who gives her the impetus to write an enormously successful screenplay, which propels her into a sickening, drug-filled world. Meanwhile, Claire enrolls in a poetry-writing class and becomes attached to the instructor, deeply disturbing Violet, who resents the loss of her friend's attention. Up to this point in the plot, the story is told in alternating sections of first-person narration. The climax and denouement, however, are even more consciously movielike, shifting to third person and focusing on the externals of the scenes in which Claire and Violet separately attend and flee a wild party, heading for the desert where they come together in the end. The sex and violence are explicit; the colors, odors, and tastes of Claire and Violet's Los Angeles world are even more distinctly described. Block's style is still light and frothy here, but there is substance within.-Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
In a Neverland-yet-here-and-now Los Angeles, Block (I Was a Teenage Fairy, 1998, etc.) first presents Violet, who is 17, and who has already endured her Goth phase; she's also been depressed and a cutter of her own flesh. Violet has a vision, though, for she loves movies and studies them obsessively; she writes her screenplay fanatically, while seeing the world with clarity—it unspools as if on film. When she meets the vulnerable Claire, whose is as fey and fragile as her Tinker Bell T-shirt wings, their friendship heals the broken places in each other. Set-pieces abound, but they are presented exquisitely: Violet has an erotic (but safe-sex) encounter with a famed rock star; Claire attends a poetry workshop; a wild LA party follows Violet's screenwriting success; both girls find the metaphors of the shooting star and the Joshua tree in the desert. Fans of the author's previous works will take to this one; newcomers will be captured by the rainbow iridescence of Block's prose and her hallucinatory descriptions of the darkest of teen angst and shiniest of Hollywood glitz. (Fiction. 13+)
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