Block, Francesca Lia. Echo.

HarperCollins. 216p c2001. 0-06-440744-6. $6.99. SA

To quote KLIATT's July 2001 review of the hardcover edition: In her dark, evocative style, Block (author of Weetzie Bat and other YA novels) tells of a girl named Echo finding herself and finding love, in a series of linked stories set in L.A. and New York. Magic and supernatural beings play an important role here: the opening story is titled "My Mother, the Angel" ... Small, plain Echo feels that she can never live up to her mother: "The only things I know how to do well are shoplift, kiss, and dance." When her father develops cancer, her parents' love for each other seems to exclude Echo. When she goes down to the beach at night and nearly drowns, another kind of angel saves her, an abused boy with whom she falls in love. The other stories dip into her parents' background, Echo's time at college when she falls in love with a magician called Thorn and becomes anorexic, her love for a rock star called Smoke who has a frail, fairy-like baby girl called Eden, and Echo's relationship, with a pair of vampire-like fitness trainers ... Echo moves to New York, starts to paint, and meets once again her angel from the beach: "It had taken Echo this long to believe in Echo and that this man could love her enough."

This is powerful stuff, full of love, death, anguish, and redemption. The emotional intensity, sensuality, fantasy, and mature themes (and language) that characterize Block's other work appear here as well, weaving a dark spell over readers ready to enter her universe.