ROSES AND BONES, Francesca Lia Block

I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I began reading this book. Yes, a promising opening to a review, but any readers unfamiliar with Block and her writing style might be taken by surprise, too. If you feel so bold, prepare to be swept away by the flood of poetry, swirling with startling imagery, dark themes and shards of tales as old as time refashioned in the landscape of American culture.

Roses and Bones is not actually one book, but three shorter novels (novellas?) Block began publishing in 2000. Psyche in a Dress comes first and, as though anticipating how many unwary readers would open this book, hits us right off with free verse. The story follows one girl, the daughter of a Hollywood director, on a journey of growth and self-discovery in the guises of many characters from Greek myth. If you ate up such stories in grade school like I did, you’ll enjoy piecing together the references Block weaves in each chapter; for those who had more productive ways to spend their free time, you might end up spiking the book on the ground out of frustration. Or not, if you’re too sucked in by Block’s lyricism and deft word-craft already. Which you should be.

Block writes in a style I wish I could steal for my own benefit. Her words just flow across the page. Her strongest writing arises in descriptions of the dreary, dreamlike scenes in Los Angeles (that’s about 80% of the stories, so yay!). Those stories not set in L.A. engross you as well, but the former envelope the reader in an intimate, often uncomfortable glimpse of the seedy, dangerous, romantic, and existential-crisis-inducing city through the eyes of a poet. A poet who loves Greek mythology and fairytales.

I was a little hesitant to include Roses and Bones on this blog since its fantastical elements are not necessarily based in magic. There’s an arguable presence of magical realism—instances where magic or magical creatures might be at play, but it’s left ambiguous. Take Psyche in a Dress—are we supposed to believe that the protagonist’s name really is Psyche? Her name changes, so to speak, with each new story she steps into, becoming Echo, Eurydice, Persephone, and eventually Demeter, while also rediscovering her identity as Psyche through her first lover Eros. The name switches might cause confusion, but it’s a testament to Block’s skill that we are never really in doubt that it’s one character we’re following the entire time, even as her identity shifts. More than that, she beautifully unites the myths with another classic trope, the coming-of-age story, and makes it above all things authentic. The love stories, the tragedy, and the sprinkles of fantasy all serve to heighten instead of undermine the relatable and painfully real trials of adolescence and adulthood. Block brings in poignant relief the relevance of the old myths to the modern world.

She does the same again in the next short novel Echo, if not as literally. While the main character is named after the Greek figure, the rest of her story focuses more on her individual life while tying in nods to other religions; angel imagery is especially prominent. The exact reason for it eludes me, except that, like Psyche in a Dress, it’s mostly set in Los Angeles, the “City of Angels”. Many themes carry over from the previous section, but Echo reads more like a typical piece of contemporary prose fiction. The flow and flavor of her style doesn’t falter, however. Block repeatedly succeeds in surprising us with unexpected metaphors and details that bring a semi-surreal world to life. Now and then some details might startle more than illustrate all the layers of meaning she wants to convey (she once describes Echo’s shoulders as feeling like the skulls of birds). Her writing nonetheless grabs you.

The last section, The Rose and the Beast, continues in short-story form the premise of retelling old stories, this time just fairytales. Her renditions of Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and the Snow Queen bear the most resemblance to the earlier sections with clearly modern settings and shocking scenarios that revitalize the dread the fairytales originally intended to deliver. The adaptations of Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow-White and Rose-Red (renamed Rose White and Rose Red) bring more of the traditional magic of the stories into an equally timeless environment. “Beast” is probably my favorite, but it also has the least happy ending—the Beast’s spell is broken, but its breaking takes away his supernatural bond with Beauty. In short, it made them both ordinary people, which isn’t terrible, but it leaves Beauty yearning for the days when they could connect without words act like free wild creatures outside the bonds of normalcy. There’s so much anyone could interpret from this one retelling and what it reveals about the original story. All of Block’s stories strive for this—some more effectively than others.

For reads in search of a little stylistic variety in their YA fantasy, jump on Roses and Bones as soon as you can. It may be not all that you expected or wanted it to be—that’s the magic of it.

Rating: 4/5