- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (Jun 21 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060840587
- ISBN-13: 978-0060840587
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.5 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #561,388 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. YA author Block (the Weetzie Bat books) collaborates on a novel yet maintains her trademarks: fairy tale simplicity combined with wrenching emotional realism, served with a hefty side of over-the-top romance. It's told mostly from the perspective of premonition-prone Ruby, who, along with her sister, Opal, grows up terrorized by a chillingly abusive father while their loving but eerily passive mother looks on. Interspersed throughout are vignettes from the life of a British boy named Orion Woolf, who grows up with a kind but deceitful sorceress mother, Isabelle, and blooms into dangerous beauty. Ruby, seeking solace from a bad relationship, moves to Los Angeles and works as a nanny for a movie producer whose film stars Orion, who has become an Orlando Bloomesque star. Instantly smitten, Ruby buys a plane ticket to England, where she traipses through a psychedelic London, lands in Orion's ultra-bucolic hometown, finds a job in Isabelle's magic shop and hones her innate powers. When a badly ailing Orion comes home to hide from the world, Ruby uses her gifts to nurse him back to health—though, as her intensifying flashbacks to the horrors of her childhood gradually reveal, she may be even more in need of healing. (July 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This is a lovely, lyrical story of a young woman who does her best to overcome an abusive past and live the happily-ever-after fairy tale. Ruby leaves the Midwest for L.A. and is employed as a nanny when she finds that life, while good, could be so much more if only she could be with the love of her life, an actor named Orion. She goes to England to find his family and to see if she can meet him. Patience and planning put Ruby at the right place at the right time. Alternating voices and a realistic but experimental style, sparked with magic ritual and spells, elevate the story from ordinary to extraordinary. Ruby's point of view shifts from first to second to third person, mirroring flashbacks that reveal the essence of who she is and emphasizing her mystical connection to her soul mate. In contrast, Orion's point of view stays grounded firmly in third person. Ruby discovers that while you can leave the past behind, it will never leave you alone unless you confront it. Teens who like Block's work may miss the urban punk edginess of her Shangri-LA books, but this collaboration will definitely draw new readers with its tempered, yet recognizable, style.–Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Block does it again...an original...,
By
This review is from: Ruby: A Novel (Hardcover)
Best read of the year. I tore through it in one night. Block uses her fairy-scented, ruby-lighted, dangerous-love magic to create a wonderful tale of heartbreak and the road back to love. Ruby survives her own midwestern terror tale and leaves to find her own "secret agent lover man" in England where she also finds kindred spirits and magic galore. A wonderful tale of strength, beauty, and the magic found all around us...Block style...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.6 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews) 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
definately a jewel,
By Samantha J. Smith "Sam" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Ruby: A Novel (Hardcover)
I love Francesca Lia Block. To date I own almost everything shes written.She has such a colorful language, and imagination. She truely brings you into the book as it youre really just a fly on the wall, but seeing it all happen for yourself instead of reading a story. This book, unlike so many of her others dosent take place in Los Angeles, but she apparently still has the power to make any city magic. 7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another beautifully-written and magical book from Block,
By Gen of North Coast Gardening - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Ruby: A Novel (Hardcover)
What a magical, mystical read! Like all of Block's other books, this modern fairy tale combines harsh reality with transcendent beauty to create an uplifting and inspiring read.The descriptions and places in the book helped transport me fully into Ruby's world, and the magical people and happenings kept me thinking about the book weeks after I closed it. If you have liked Block's other work, you will love this. This book has the magic and untraditional romance of her Weetzie Bat books, and was wonderful to fall into at the end of the day. 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved ambiguity -- even about what is real and what is imagined,
By C. ward "mbmama" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Ruby: A Novel (Hardcover)
I love this book. The ambiguity -- even about what is real and what is imagined -- is very engrossing and satisfying (not like a game that's designed by someone who knows more than you about the story like with some books). Empowering is so overused, but this book is truely empowering. It's like the main character, Ruby, is nurturing you, the reader. Some paragraphs are so simple and profound I had to read them again. And, I continued thinking about the narrators' wisdom the next day. I make it sound so serious, but actually this book is very entertaining and even sexy in places.Maybe I'm not the target audience for this book (I'm 40), but the journey it took me on allowed me to be in my own teen/ young adult mind/ emotions -- in a good way, since I also have my 40-year old self to look on. So fun!! |
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