Necklace of Kisses: A Novel
She healed my heart with tears.
SO good. I read this in a 3-hour time span on a Pacific – Atlantic flight, cover to cover. I laughed, I cried, I didn’t care that I was in public.
Francesca Lia Block has offered reading I lusted for since Weetzie Bat. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read everything she has to offer.
Block covers some seriously dark, trippy stuff in some of her books. All the same, compelling as hell.
In Necklace of Kisses, she treads wistful territory in a coming of age, for us women coming of age after the question – or act – of divorce. The erasure of old stories through the enactment of fantasy. The fantasy world entering into the real. The fantastical as part and parcel to a magical daily life.
I’m forever gratefully heartbroken by Block’s writing. I couldn’t make it through Eat, Pray, Love – though I tried three times. But Necklace of Kisses was a growing up, growing into, growing through, that hit home – and then caressed the sweet spot with a magical balm that healed a tearing in my pericardium.
Thank you, Ms. Block. I think I’m in love with you.
P.S. I also let my daughter read this when she was 11. (Yes, I’m liberal in these areas.) Now 12, she’s read it three times.
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