Black Light [Import] [Paperback]

Elizabeth Hand (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Flamingo (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0006551246
• ISBN-13: 978-0006551249
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,490,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum; she was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology, and received her B.A. She is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-Winner), Glimmering, and Mortal Love, and three collections of stories, including the recent Saffron and Brimstone. Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopeoic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chose as New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. A regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Hand lives with her family on the Maine Coast.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A vengeful little goddess", October 19, 2000

By 

lb136 "lb136" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Black Light (Mass Market Paperback)

This audacious and playfully malicious followup to Elizabeth Hand's masterpiece _Waking the Moon_ (fans of that book will surely be delighted to find themselves once again in the raffish company of Balthazar Warnick) reads at times like a crazed, sexed-up _Alice in Wonderland_. At other times, you'll think it's a lost "Buffy" episode.

Set back in the drug- and sex-crazed early 1970s, the book, crammed with Jungian references that won't scare you off, tells the story of Charlotte (Lit) Moylan, at the turning point between adolescence and womanhood, as she slides and glides her way through a most unusual Hallowe'en party held at a properly mysterious mansion (it's the centerpiece of a suburban New York town) presided over by a renegade film-maker, who happens to be Lit's godfather. Hand turns the gothic mansion, with its hidden passages and its motley crew of guests, into a symbol of the hideous era in which the book is set. And during the course of the long night Lit not only turns the corner into adulthood, but also transforms herself from used to user.

Terrifyingly terrific, superbly written, Hand's genre transcending novel is best read in late autumn, with Joni Mitchell's "Don't Give Up the Sorrow" on your stereo and with all the lights turned up bright.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Second Disappointing Book in a Row, September 1, 2000

By 

M. Wilson "Eclectic Reader" (Ft. Thomas, KY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Light (Hardcover)

I have read every novel written by Elizabeth Hand (in the order of their publication) and have been a devoted fan until now. The Winterlong novels featured a rich prose and surreal imagery reminiscent of Samuel Delaney's best novels (e.g. Triton or Nova). Waking the Moon was a truly spookey novel placed in a modern setting that was more accessable than the fantasy/sci-fi oriented Winterlong books. While much has been made of Hand's darkly atmospheric writing style, I also appreciated the characters and the ideas (though plotting has never been her strong suit). HOWEVER, the last two books, Glimmering and Black Light, seem to have been written on auto-pilot. It was as if someone else tried to write these books "in the style of Elizabeth Hand." In fact, I was so bored by Black Light, I stopped reading it on page 300 after 200 pages of following the main character around from room to room during the course of a party. In both books, the pacing was dreadfully slow and I just did not care about the characters. Both works needed a good editor, frankly.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Now that I understand it better..., November 1, 2001

By 

Kelly (Fantasy Literature) (Columbia, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Black Light (Mass Market Paperback)

I retract my previous negative review. The more I learn about the cult of Dionysus, the more I realize just how well-researched and how well-crafted this novel is. I still say it might be a little boring if you don't know what's really going on--but think about Dionysus, think about Ariadne and her myth, learn everything you can. and then look at it again and see the pieces begin to fall into place.