The Hanged Man

this book is beautifully written, blocks writing style is so interesting. it does romanticize anorexia and drug abuse, but the point is you see it from the characters eyes.

i read francesca blocks over and over as a young teenager, and now, at 21, this story is the one that still resonates with me. the prose is lyrical and haunting, and contains a seamlessness sometimes lacking in her work, which, though always poetic, tends to lapse into moments of clunkiness. i also think this is the most subtle storyline she's ever created. i was impressed with laurel as a character. the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred, and laurel's role as an unreliable narrator is established gradually, which only adds to the story's resonance. this is the most adult of block's novels, and my favorite of hers. i think this author is not for everyone, but if you've read her work and liked it in the past, or are an older reader unfamilair with her work, "the hanged man," may be a good book for you.

Francesca Lia Block writes half in poetry, half in prose. This story incorporates the Tarot deck into a girl's life, a girl who is searching, like many of her characters, for her sense of self. Rather than having never had it in the first place, Laurel lost it when she was young, having been traumatized. The way this story unfolds little bits of Laurel's life, showing her past and finally building up to a point where it cannot stay hidden any more, is done masterfully. The quote used on the outside, when Laurel is rationalizing her anorexia, "I will be thin and pure like spun glass . . ." or something similar to that, is one of the most haunting and evocative quotes I have ever read. I found this book very inspiring, not as someone who had a traumatized childhood (I didn't, not like this) but as a reader who has found the magic and poetry of the nineties and "pop" modern culture in the writings of an author, finally.

This is one of the most beautiful books i've ever read. It isso subtle yet so strong and heartbreaking at points. In the typicalBlock fairy-tale style which made me fall in love with her writings in the first place, we are told the story of Laurel, a very lost 17 year old girl trying to find herself in the lush and poisonous setting of LA. It was so hypnotic and intoxicating, i felt as though i was seeing the world high the whole time i was reading. Some sections were so harsh yet sweet in those small important ways, that i cried. and some of it just hit to close to home. her world, no matter how she dresses it up in flowery words and exotic backgrounds, is REAL . and i think that that is the most appealing part of all. I LOVE THIS BOOK.

This is the first book I read of Francesca Lia Block's, and after having read all of them thus far, this still stands out in my head and the most powerful and deeply-moving one of all. Block transports us into Laurel's world with the same amount of confusion, frustration, passion, and bottled up emotions. Her beautifullt lyrical prose lets you escape up into the hills with the freaks, and the animals, and the sparks of fireworks, and popping bubbles. It is so grounded in the harsh reality of drugs, abuse, eating disorders, death, and relationships, but the writing has a magical feeling to it, YOU WILL feel different after reading it.

"The Hanged Man" is somewhat of a loner in Francesca Lia Block's bibliography. It's not connected to her most famous series, the Weetzie Bat books, by anything other than location. The protagonist is Laurel, a seventeen-year-old girl whose father has just died. She flirts with death and anorexia in the dark magic of the LA that is her world, of devils and flowers, voodoo and fairies. When I first read this book, it made me cry-- somthing very few books have done. Block's writing is a very true approximation of a sensitive yet jaded teenager trying to come to grips with her life. The descriptions in the book are amazing-- one that stands out is this one, describing the voice of a man Laurel meets in the hospital where her father is dying. "His voice cracked the way ice does when you pour liquor over it." Your heart cracks, too.