"If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, then the San Fernando Valley is her tinybopper sister." This is the opening of Francesca Lia Block's "I Was A Teenage Fairy," published by HarperTeen. I knew from that first sentence that I was going to love this book. The poetry of the sentences and the imagery that is evoked is enough to carry the book but these are coupled with a deeply moving and beautiful story. It's a winner in my book.
It is the story of Barbie Marks a young girl with an aging beauty queen mom who is hoping to force Barbie into becoming everything she wasn't. So Mrs. Marks takes her beautiful daughter into LA to talk to an agent. This agent offers to take some pictures of Barbie to get her used to being in front of the camera. And because he wants Barbie to be as comfortable as possible he suggests that her mother wait in the lobby. Right away Barbie feels that something is wrong and when she asks to be shown how the camera works he instead offers to come around and get his picture taken with her. So he walks around the camera and puts her on his lap, holds her real tight and changes her life forever.
Barbie grows up to look like her namesake and becomes the model her mother wanted her to be. And though she feels lost and hurt because of what happened in her childhood she has a friend that doesn't allow her to sit and feel sorry for herself but makes her get up and live her life. A little friend who follows her everywhere, uses bad language and hates when anyone says the words "I love you," a fairy friend named Mab. Francesca Lia Block writes "Maybe Mab was real...Maybe not. Maybe Mab was the fury. Maybe she was the courage. Maybe later on she was the sex." Mab was the pinkie-sized friend that never let Barbie settle for less than her dreams. With Mab by her side Barbie enters into a new relationship with a famous actor, and begins to follow her true dream of being a photographer.
The whole book is made up of poetry and pain, colors, light and dark. Francesca Lia Block has a voice unlike any other author I have ever come across. She can take a darkness like child molestation and turn it into a story of overcoming with a foul-mouthed fairy in it. This 186 page story is one of my favorite books. Mab became one of my favorite characters filthy mind and all. I highly recommend this book, it's a quick read and well worth the time. It's a beautiful book one that I read again and again and I promise that once you meet Mab and Barbie it will become a repeater for you as well. So go out and find yourself a copy of "I Was A Teenage Fairy" and enter into the world that Francesca Lia Block creates, it's a world that you won't want to miss.
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