BOOKS BOUGHT:
- Weetzie Bat—Francesca Lia Block
- Necklace of Kisses—Francesca Lia Block
- Holes—Louis Sachar
- The World Made Straight—Ron Rash
- Eagle Blue: A Team, A Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska —Michael D’Orso
- Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin —Lawrence Weschler
- A Disorder Peculiar to the Country—Ken Kalfus
BOOKS READ:
- Weetzie Bat—Francesca Lia Block
- Tom’s Midnight Garden—Philippa Pearce
- The World Made Straight—Ron Rash
- Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences —Lawrence Weschler
The story so far: I have written a young-adult novel, and on a trip to Washington, D.C., to promote it, I met a load of librarians and other assorted enthusiasts who introduced me to a magical new world that I knew nothing about. I really do feel as though I’ve walked through the back of a wardrobe into some parallel universe, peopled by amazing writers whom you never seem to read about on books pages, or who never come up in conversations with literary friends. (The truth, I suspect, is that these writers are frequently written about on books pages, and I have never bothered to read the reviews; come to think of it, they probably come up frequently in conversations with literary friends, and I have never bothered to listen to anything these friends say.)
It was in D.C. that I met David Almond, whose brilliant book Skellig started me off on this YA jag; and it was in D.C. that Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat, first published in 1989, was frequently cited as something that started something, although to begin with, I wasn’t sure what Weetzie Bat was, or even if the people talking about it were speaking in a language I understood, so I can’t, unfortunately, tell you what Weetzie Bat is responsible for. When I got home, I bought it from Amazon (it doesn’t seem to be available in the U.K.), and a few days later I received a very tiny paperback, 113 large-print pages long and about three inches high, and suspiciously, intimidatingly pink. Pink! And gold! The book is so short that you really don’t need to be seen with it on public transport, but I wouldn’t have cared anyway, because it’s beautiful, and I would have defended its honor against any football hooligan who wanted to snigger at me.
Weetzie Bat is, I suppose, about single mothers and AIDS and homosexuality and loneliness, but that’s like saying that “Desolation Row” is about Cinderella and Einstein...
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contributor
contributor
Nick Hornby is the bestselling author of eight novels, including High Fidelity, About a Boy, and, most recently, Just Like You. He has also published several works of nonfiction including his ground-breaking debut, Fever Pitch, and has written numerous award-winning screenplays for film and television including Brooklyn, Wild, and State of the Union.
