![]() One of the more mature and unabashed of Block's works (as far as her YA novels are concerned). I think it glamorizes anorexia a bit - I mean, it is clearly bad, one of the many ways in which Laurel is damaged, but she likes the aesthetics of it and the descriptions of her body aren't really any different from descriptions in Block's other books. It's only made explicit that Laurel's father molested her near the end, but you can tell that something's wrong very early, when she thinks of the sunshine being so beautiful she wants to shoot it up her veins, and you can tell what it is once the Midas references come in. This is only barely hopeful, ending with something like the decision to try to heal rather than healing itself the book itself is full of indirections and asides that tell the story, so perhaps it's fitting that the ending is incomplete as well. It would probably be too romanticized for me now, and the race and culturally appropriative bits make me flinch, but it does capture something of what adolescence was like for me as a girl in the 80s, this mix of desire and fear and the sexuality looming dangerous (men, rapists, AIDs). ![]()
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