Book Soup (Venue Partner)
8818 W Sunset Blvd
310.659.3110
This event has passed.
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Pretty Dead
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- When
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Saturday Oct 3, 2009 (2–3:30pm)
- Where
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- Price
Francesca Lia Block presents and signs Pretty Dead The deluge of interchangeable vampire novels has grown to such proportions that its genuinely startling when a true original emerges. Seventeen-year-old (in appearance, anyway) Charlotte is what she calls a V word, yet lives a seemingly perfect life: gorgeous, brilliant, and wrapped in the finest of clothes and jewelry. What she lacks is a companion. But when her human friend Emily kills herself, she finds herself drawn to Emilys boyfriend, Jared, who reminds her of her beloved twin brother whodied nearly a century ago. In the books most powerful sequence, Charlotte describes to Jared her transformation at the hands of the vampire William in 1925, and how the two murderous lovers were present for everything from the bombing of Hiroshima and the dawn of the AIDS crisis to Kurt Cobains suicide and the 9/11 attacks almost as if their very proximity drew evil. Now, as Charlotte begins experiencing human-like symptoms (a broken nail, a zit, her period), William returns, and he brings with him an awful secret. Block is less concerned about mythology than she is with the malaise brought on by a vampires eternity of sorrow. With mournful prose, she has created something psychologically complex, erotically charged, and unusually poignant. (Harper Teen)
