WeetzieBat (Dangerous Angels, Part l)

This short novel is a children’s fairy story for streetwise teenagers. Originally published in America in 1989, it is the first of five books under the series title ‘Dangerous Angels’. The dangerous angel is love, and Weetzie Bat, an American girl in very late adolescence, is in search of it. So is her first boyfriend Dirk, who proves not to be the answer to Weetzie’s dreams but a fellow-dreamer, because he is gay. Helped by the three wishes granted her by a genie, Weetzie is able to set up house for them both, each with a partner. Between them the male threesome, one straight and two gay, provide Weetzie with the next accessory she craves, a baby. Eventually a second baby is deposited on their doorstep by a witch, and the domestic circle (augmented by numerous dogs) is complete.

Set in Los Angeles, this zany story is part send-up and part celebration of young adult life in the hot, cool, one-off city, where a wild hedonism, greedy for food and drink and sex and sun, is shadowed by the unnamed, omnipresent threat of AIDS. Although its raw anarchic invention has almost lyrical intensity, the writing is oddly parochial in both time and place. A successful transatlantic crossing seems unlikely.