Okay, I think I'm also kind of mad at this book because she punked out. There are moments in this book when it does help, when it creates a mood or helps you understand how a character is dealing with/processing the events in his or her memory, which just makes those moments when it seems like artifice for artifice's sake seem even more pretentious. But if my struggle to figure out what's going on, who's who in her books, doesn't ultimately lead to some sort of revelation or insight into those characters (which, for me, that struggle is just a struggle and not an illumination), then it's kind of pointless. Maybe I've read too much, become too set in my ways, too judgmental to let her brilliance shine down on me. When your structure gets in the way of communication, it need tweaking. She does a lot of interesting things with her narrative structure and the way she tells her story, but 1) I don't think her flights of structural fancy always help her tell her story better (which in my mind should be a requirement), 2) they often add an offputting distance between the reader and the characters, and 3) I don't think she always has as much control over them as she thinks she does (see also: #1 and #2). You know, I always think I should like Francesca Lia Block, that I do like her, and then I read her stuff and am reminded that, no, she's not particularly my cup of tea.
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