Roses And Bones: Myths, Tales, And Secrets (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
Roses and Bones: Myths, Tales, and Secrets is a compendium of three of Block's books. I had not read any of these previously, but I had read several other of her books years ago when I was in college, like the Weetzie Bat series. I remembered liking them at the time, and enjoying her writing style, so I picked this up at the library a few weeks ago. I can see why I enjoyed her then, but I did not enjoy this as much now, as an adult.The thing with Block's writing is that it is very intoxicating, on the surface, because she is very gifted at writing dreamy, magical prose that pulls you in to a beautiful yet tragic place. She is excellent at describing scenery, people, clothing, food, and so forth, as well as portraying emotions like longing, puppy love, and emptiness. However, deep down, it's all quite depressing. Her version of love, as another reviewer commented, isn't true love, it's misguided lust, codependency, and one-sided obsessions. Or is that "true" love - that is, is that reality? I like to think not...Her writing used to suck me in, because I so wanted to be one of the characters in her books: gritty and beautiful and adored by at least one person who could see past my imperfections and love me with every ounce of their being. It would be us against the world, holding hands and forging our way through endless bright lights and dim rooms and drinks and parties and people and we would be fabulous amazing sparkly rock stars whether anyone else realized it or not...and so forth. That is no longer a goal of mine. I would like a real relationship, where we have independence, and aren't dead inside when the other is away for five seconds, thank you...But I digress...This book in particular is essentially three stories of all of that - central female characters that party and sleep around and are all quite unremarkable and fairly damaged, but her writing makes them seem like they are something to aspire to be.Psyche in a Dress, the first book, is written in a poetry-esque style. I am not familiar with the original myths that it's based on, and although I was going to look them up as I was reading this book, I got lazy and didn't. I was fairly confused throughout the story because of my lack of knowledge of the original stories as well as the cryptic writing. It was so-so.The second book, Echo, was easier to understand, although she jumps around characters quite a bit and it gets hard to follow. Each chapter is narrated through a different point of view from the one before, and some of the characters have more than one name. Nevertheless, it isn't too difficult to piece together, although I wished I had a flow chart at one point to track all the people everyone was sleeping with. Echo, the lead character, really bothered me though. She had a psychic power which allowed her to see into someone's past if she did an erotic striptease for them. Seriously, what the hell? The way Block writes it makes it seem like this is some magical, mystical, amazing thing where she sees into boys' souls and then heals them by having sex with them, but to me it was just some patriarchal BS. She always is left empty inside because they never stick around, so it's just another example of a woman serving men in a non-equal situation. Screw that.The third section was a bit different. It's a collection of very short stories that are all variations on fairy tales. Some of the originals I was not familiar with or I couldn't quite correlate with the original version, but others translated fairly well. A couple were cute, especially Tiny, a variant of Thumbelina. My favorite, and probably the only thing I truly liked in the entire book, was the Snow White adaptation. I won't spoil the ending, but it's how I've always wished the story ended up. I've had this on my shelf for awhile and Roses & Bones was the second book of Francesca Lia Block's that I read. Although, I couldn't seem to get into this one.I had got it from Bookperk when I was getting Abandon, and thought why not! The mythology and fairy tales really grabbed at my attention, I totally though this was going to be the book for me. Only it wasn't.There's 3 books in this and I read the first one, Psyche in a Dress, which was in a sort of poetry like format. Not normal novel paragraphs at least. It was a sort of mesh of Greek myths from Psyche and Eros and Persephone and Hades and other Greek myth pieces. It was interesting, yet a little hard to read. For when I see the "poetry" like format, my brain automatically tries to find a rhythm from my school years.The next story Echo was where my attention started to wan. The perspectives were very scattered, at first I was fine because Echo was the storyteller, but then it jumped around in the story telling, but still had the characters from within. I think one section was a flashback from another character, but then we jump back to Echo and at the time I didn't know that. A whole new story was going on with Echo. It was just confusing, and then it goes onto a character we haven't met but then Echo meets him to tie it back into the story. I was just so lost I gave that one up.The next one was The Rose and the Beast, this had a collection of shorter stories that were supposed to be the fairy tales retold sort of thing. I didn't even make it through the first one. It was called "Snow" so it was following the threads of Snow White in a way, but after spending so much time reading Echo, my brain just wasn't into it so I ended up stopping the book entirely.This was a DNF for me and one of the firsts that I had in awhile, maybe someday I'll go back to the last segment and try it again, but I really don't know. The book sounded like it was going to be interesting, but it just wasn't for me. The mythic and fable-ic (Not really a word, but you get it) elements weren't really strong in the last ones. At least not that I could see, so it was a letdown for me. It does still have the same contemporary feel of I Was a Teenage Fairy, that one I read years ago and liked pretty good. When I still read some contemporaries at least, although since there was a fairy not sure if you could call it contemporary. The paranormal or in this case "mythic" elements just weren't strong enough for my UF tastes.
What do You think about Roses And Bones: Myths, Tales, And Secrets (2010)?
Not entirely my favorite book. I get how it was written- just not something I enjoy.
—Chang
A lovely book containing some of Francesca Lia Block's most beautiful works.
—ZRaiysa
