MISSING ANGEL JUAN

Still following the teenage experiences of Weetzie Bat (1989) and her friends, Block departs, for the first time, from the L.A. scene. The Goat Guys' success isn't enough for Angel Juan; he flies to N.Y.C. to prove himself as a performer on his own, sending back postcards but no address. Witch Baby sets out to find him; she stays in Weetzie's father Charlie Bat's empty apartment, communing with his ghost (at one point, Charlie takes her back to his Brooklyn childhood) and finding signs of Angel Juan in such surprising places as a tree in Central Park. Eventually, in an extraordinary dreamlike scene that bespeaks both the city's underworld and the young people's rites of passage, Witch Baby finds Angel Juan, who is, at last, ready to be found: ```Who was that man?' `He was our fear,' says Angel Juan. `My fear of love and yours of being alone. But we don't need him anymore.''' In her fourth book, Block's lyrical interplay of leitmotifs and artful allusions (statues, mannequins, drag queens; photos, mirrors, ghosts; pimps, wholesale butchers, vegetarians; and, of course, angels) continues to be uniquely fascinating and provocative. (Fiction. 12+)