I remember when my Theater Arts teacher recommended Weetzie Bat (side note, he also recommended Poppy Z. Brite to me, both of whom significantly shaped my fiction and writing tastes). I remember thinking what a weird title and giggling. But then he let me borrow it. What a weird tale.
Weetzie Bat is a teen/young adult (several years pass even though this is a short book) who is struggling to define family and love and find both for herself and her friend, Dirk. Dirk is the hottest boy in school, who quickly reveals he’s gay, who also becomes the first member of Weetzie’s fairy tale family.
Because this is a fairy tale book, magic pulled straight out of the tired sadness of L.A. Weetzie’s first Prince Charming finds his own surfer Prince Charming after she wishes on a genie lamp for them to have love and a happily ever after. But happily ever after is what you make of it, and here readers will find not just gay characters, but all manner of alternative relationships, love children, witches, disease scares, drug-induced tragedies and victories sown in blood and tears.
Weetzie Bat is a tragically hipster book with its own surreal lyrical style, but a core of modern myth making. A handful of readers will be too annoyed by the style, but most find Weetzie to be a coming-of-age story about coming to terms with the hand life has dealt you and how little it tends to look like what you expected.
If there’s anything readers should find in these pages it’s that magic exists, if you look for it, and family (and love) is what you make of it.
*This book is also available in all in one form as Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block.