Wasteland by Francesca Lia Block
#48 in my 50 book challenge for the year. Block is one of my favorite authors. Wasteland, a teen-fiction novel, is the spare, bittersweet story of Marina, and her sorrow in the wake of her brother Lex’s death. Marina casts about for reasons, aided by her friend West. The book is narrated alternately by all three, even by Lex, seemingly from beyond the dead. The book is powerful and provocative, but I felt Block pulled her punches at the end with a soap-opera-convention plot turn. It is filled with late 70’s/early 80’s detail, and does not have much of Block’s characteristic poetic prose and magical realism, though it is nonetheless beautifully written.
You died. You were sitting on the bleachers in P.E. when Ms. Sand told you to go to the principal’s office. You were peeling the yellow rubber thing that said N.H.H.S. off of your green gym shorts and chewing your fingernails on the other hand. You could taste the bitter peel of polish. You were staring down through the slats of the bleachers to the gym floor. You were not even forcing tears back down because there weren’t any because you were dead.
You, that’s me. You called me you and I called you you. That was our name for each other. When you died I did and so it didn’t matter. (P. 19)