The Waters and the Wild Book

For much of its brief length, "The Waters and the Wild" feels like one of Block's most tonally consistent books, a stripped-down tale with charged mythic overtones and so little of Block's usually defiant Shangri-L.A. kitsch that the very few pop culture references feel like missteps. But those fleeting hipster nods, as well as the moment when Bee's mom asks her about condoms, don't drag the book far out from its bedtime-story feel of dream and menace.

But--as noted by many other readers, this is a very brief book. So much so that, as I read it, I began to wonder why it wasn't simply a short story? The essence of the tale feels so fable-like that much of the surface incident sounds extraneous. Why should Bee and her friends crash that party at all, for instance?

And then-- suddenly, just when the goal is in view, Block yanks the rug out from under the reader's feet in an effusion of free verse about AIDS, 9-11 and global warming, all of which apparently has something to do with the realm of fairies and why Bee needs to get back to them. And yet-- this same ending strongly suggests that all that has come before is *not* a tale of a parallel, supernatural realm but simply a little allegory about the pangs of puberty.

So: either we should be happy that Bee has made her way to her fairy mother, in which case I'm bummed because the whole place sounds pretty frightening, no better a fate for Bee than if she were Proserpina dragged off to Hades (I mean, the doppelganger Bee sounded pretty pissed living there!). Or: Bee has simply come of age and turned into a budding teenage woman, in which case we should be content that a girl who was making friends with people who quote Shelley or sing Billie Holiday is now a bitchy hooch who wears pink camouflage pants?

Either way, this is a bitter pill to swallow, and yet again Block has a) dragged in real-world darkness in a way that's hamfisted and frankly galling; and b) once again prevaricated on whether supernaturalistic happenings are real or not! "They both, in their short present lives, had known war and watched the climate change enough to threaten the earth's existence" (113). Isn't that a bit rich for 13-year olds living in Los Angeles? And in a publishing world where vampire thrillers are stacked to the skies, can't Block just go with the flow and say, Yes, this heroine's a fairy? Does she think she's being all delicately literary by beating around the bush? This isn't "The Turn of the Screw" for heaven's sake!

The prose was often lovely, and I liked Bee in her elusive, minimalist characterization. You could even say her final pages in the book are memorably dreamlike and scary, expect Block isn't giving us a clue as to what's really happening and, whatever it is, it doesn't seem too pleasant. Poor Bee. And poor "The Waters and the Wild". Another missed opportunity.