I sat next to her in German class my sophomore year in college, this girl who wore thermals under t-shirts and lined her wrist with jelly bracelets. She loved makeup and glitter but also thrift store clothes and, in her words, “dressing like a boy.” I felt I already knew her before we ever spoke; I was so sure of this that when she told me her name that first day in class, I looked at her quizzically and said, “But don’t we already know each other?”
Before long, she was calling my dorm room every night to implore me to stop studying and start drinking with her already. On sunny Saturdays, I put on a hippie skirt and she put on glitter and we drank beer for twelve hours straight. Other weekends, she drove me to her home out of state. Her friends from back home were punk boys with pierced everything who thrashed around at shows before heading to someone’s basement to play video games deep into the night. We shopped in thrift stores and drove around aimlessly and ate in diners at three in the morning. We wondered who we’d become.
I came to know so much about this friend, real things but also the silly quirks: where she kept her stash of sour gummi worms, that she once wore several layers of slips to a wedding, or that the first boy she’d loved was named after a mythical creature. And I learned that her favorite book as a child, the book that meant more to her than any other, was Weetzie Bat.
I had never read Weetzie Bat, and in fact had never heard of it. Just listening to that strange title coming out of my friend’s mouth threw me off balance, like she was opening a part of herself I had not yet met. Still, I did not read the book, not then and not for years afterward, even if I did think about it from time to time. That novel, I could tell, had played a part in making my friend who she was.
Last year, I finally checked Weetzie Bat out of the library. It had a pink and greenish-yellow cover, electric colors vibrating with energy. It was a slim book, first published in 1989 as Francesca Lia Block’s debut. I knew by then that Weetzie Bat had something of a cult following, that it was influential in many young girls’ lives. Just not mine.
I began to read. Weetzie Bat opens with a breathless introduction to the strange magic to come:
The reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood. They didn’t even realize where they were living. They didn’t care that Marilyn’s prints were practically in their backyard at Graumann’s; that you could buy tomahawks and plastic palm tree wallets at Farmer’s Market, and the wildest, cheapest cheese and bean and hot dog and pastrami burritos at Oki Dogs; that the waitresses wore skates at the Jetson-style Tiny Naylor’s; that there was a fountain that turned tropical soda-pop colors, and a canyon where Jim Morrison and Houdini used to live, and all-night potato knishes at Canter’s, and not too far away was Venice, with columns, and canals, even, like the real Venice but maybe cooler because of the surfers.
The novel is both progressive and subversive—its sexual content and acceptance of gay relationships drew criticism from some corners. (For the record, the only time I raised an eyebrow was when I noted how the story seems to take for granted Weetzie’s family’s financial privilege.) Ultimately, the book was well loved. The New York Times called Weetzie Bat “a punk, young adult fairy tale.” Emily Gould put it this way when writing about the novel for Jezebel:
In the Weetzie Bat books, the jacaranda is always in bloom, and every character is forever going to the beach to drink pink champagne and eat something with avocados in it. Also, the books are about a teenage girl with a bleached-blond flat top named Weetzie who lives with her gay best friend Dirk and his boyfriend Duck, who sleep with her so she can have a baby named Cherokee because the love of her life, whose name is My Secret Agent Lover man, doesn’t want a child, but everything works out okay and they end up all raising the baby together. Can you believe that, in 1989, someone had the audacity to publish Weetzie Bat as a book for teenagers?
While I initially worried that I’d come to Weetzie Bat a few decades too late, I soon found myself caught in the novel’s bizarre hold. I could see my friend in this book—in the wild, imaginative storytelling, in the glitz and the charm, and, most of all, in the love. Of course my friend was affected by this book. Its essence hummed in everything I knew about her. And so I found myself wishing I, too, had read Weetzie Bat as a young teenager. Maybe I would have turned out a little more like my friend if I had—more adventurous, more colorful. Weirder and brighter and bold.
Instead, the book that has stuck with me since childhood is Behind the Attic Wall, published in 1983 by the late Sylvia Cassedy. While Weetzie is a vibrant and charmingly eccentric character, the protagonist of Behind the Attic Wall, twelve-year-old Maggie, is dour and damaged. An orphan, Maggie is sent to live with her great aunts after being kicked out of numerous boarding schools, and she seems determined to remain unhappy in her new surroundings. She’s unkempt, with greasy hair she sucks into a sharp point, and she resists making friends or engaging with anyone other than the Backwoods Girls, a group of imaginary friends she lectures on the banalities of daily life.
While Cassedy’s novel might be less dazzling than Weetzie Bat, it has plenty of magic of its own. Behind the attic wall, Maggie discovers a pair of china dolls that can move and speak. Maggie secretly meets these dolls to drink imaginary tea and lunch on wooden slices of bread with painted-on butter. For relaxation, they retire to the rose garden, which consists of an attic alcove with rose-patterned wallpaper. As Maggie grows to love these magical beings, some of her sadness starts to slide away. Even so, she remains vulnerable to losing what matters most to her.
The New York Times Book Review called Behind the Attic Wall “at once satire, fantasy and tragedy,” while the New Yorker proclaimed it a “beautifully written, very touching story” as well as “unforgettable.” I’d say that last description is apt—I never forgot this book and the haunting ache I felt in the pit of my stomach when I reached its otherworldly ending.
I’m not alone. A host of online reader reviews for Behind the Attic Wall can be summed up like this: “I read this book as a kid, and it has haunted me ever since.” I’ve reread Behind the Attic Wall twice now as an adult, and I remain struck by its quiet confidence, the story’s subtle unfolding, and the foreboding, melancholy atmosphere that rises viscerally from the page. The book is literary and artfully constructed, and I understand exactly why I loved it as a child: Maggie is a frightened introvert who evades contact to avoid being hurt even more, and it is only through her imagination that she can find solace. Not just solace—magic.
I can see the crackling energy of Weetzie Bat in my college friend just as I see Behind the Attic Wall’s introspective melancholy in myself. Even today, when this friend and I reconnect in person, I recognize the shadow of our literary influences. The bright and the sorrowful, the love and the magic—these are the books that made us.