The Island of Excess Love by Francesca Lia Block (review)

In this sequel to Love in the Time of Global Warming (BCCB 10/13), Pen, Hex, Ash, Ezra and Venice are eking out a living in Pen and Venice’s miraculously intact pink beach house in post-apocalyptic California. With the special powers each was granted after the Earth Shaker, they have what they need, but adventure isn’t finished with them yet. This time, the Aeneid is their guide, with their lives strangely aligning with that story in the way they did with the Odyssey before. After Giants destroy their home, they leave on a mysterious ship, and their voyage takes them through a ghost time to an island of dreams, where a fair king, determined that Pen will be his queen, seduces them with rich food and wine. By the time they realize it’s all been a glamor, Pen has betrayed Hex by sleeping with the king. Through all of their misadventures, Pen struggles to hold fast to her ideal of a secluded life with her loved ones, but her destiny lies outside that dream, and by the time they return home, she has developed the strength to face that destiny. This book requires knowledge of Love in the Time of Global Warming to be comprehensible, but it works better than the previous tale as an original story rather than a mere revision of a classic; the plot is more coherent, with cause and effect sequences easier to trace on their own without reference to the source text. The relationships between Pen and Hex and Pen and the king revisit themes of obsessive love and betrayal that Block has explored elsewhere, so that the intertext echoes Weetzie Bat’s story as much as the Aeneid. Pen’s exhausted but determined heroism delivered through Block’s dreamy sensual excesses will help readers see why these classics have such cultural staying power.