http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2021-10.html#hand ( )

elizabeth hand, i love you but you are a weirdo sometimes. ( )

Gripping set-up of a teenaged girl seemingly trapped, impotent against forces she can't understand led to... hundreds of pages of our heroine being impotent and not understanding. Book must have been 90% over before she exhibited more agency than a ping-pong ball. ( )

This is a follow-up to Hand's amazing & wonderful Waking the Moon. The themes are similar & Balthazar Warnick makes an appearance which is nice for those of us fond of the other book & this character.

I guess this is categorized as horror, although I've never really been able to decide what category Hand is in. She's in her own category with slightly psychedelic & overtly lush writing & odd twisty plots that meander through myth & modernity.

Just as in Waking the Moon, the idea here is that there is an ongoing struggle between the followers of order & those of chaos. In both books the main character is asked to choose between the two &, quite simply, refuses to do so.

Black Light throws the world of the '70s into clear relief as it explores the world of these sheltered & maybe not so privileged teenagers. Privilege is in a very sense a limiting (& sometimes deadly) box for all them. In this sense Hand's characters recognize that hewing to a single path is full of pitfalls & she allows them to pick their way through the forest in unique & different ways.

I've always related to her themes of difference, of lost & renewed love, of refusal to give in - that she is so interested in music & mythology is a huge bonus. I very much enjoyed this book & recommend it to anyone who spent their time as a teenager with Anais Nin, Rimbaud, & Iggy Pop in their heads. It's pretty fun for everybody else, too. ( )

Hand2Hand: idle thoughts about the borderlands of fantasy:

http://www.teaattheford.net/viewpost.php?id=39154 ( )