The Inferno

Issue date: 10/5/03 Section: Literature

Written from three different points of view, Francesca Lia Block's newest novel, Wasteland is the story of Marina and Lex, siblings who hold an unsettling, secret bond between them. West, the voice of the third point of view, is a surfer who connects with Lex, as his best friend, and who falls secretly in love with Marina.

Once again, Block shows that she can be sympathetic of the most taboo of affections. Without giving too much away from the beginning, Block portrays Marina as an exquisite California beauty plagued with sadness and guilt over her brother's death.

As the story unfolds, readers will likely become disturbed by the situation which likely led to her brother's demise: an intense love affair between the two siblings.

While the nature of the relationship is mostly perceived in small gestures, the vivid memories of their close childhood and even in their need to pull away from each other, it is made very apparent in allusions to one evening; while Lex and Marina house-sit for a favorite English teacher, an encounter between them changes everything.

Later, as Marina searches for answers regarding the death of her brother, she and West become close. Along the journey for answers, the dangers they confront come in the forms of Lex's ex-girlfriend, Justine, a tough guy appropriately named Rat, a bit of blackmail and finally, the haunting past and the whole truth.

This, the latest in a long line of twisted semi-fairy-tales, also happens to be one of Block's best novels in quite some time. Where Violet & Claire, Nymph, and I Was A Teenage Fairy began to fall short of the poetic and breathtaking style with which Block won her fame, Wasteland is a return to that style.

While the conclusion may seem a bit more like a cop out to readers with a taste for the dark side of human affection, the story itself moves so effortlessly and so warmly, each reader (even the so-called "faint of heart") will find themselves in awe of Block's language and of the strength of the relationships with which she deals.

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