Customer Reviews

Generation Loss

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've been a fan of Elizabeth Hand since Waking the Moon. WtM remains my favorite of her books, followed by her short story collections Last Summer at Mars Hill and Cleopatra Brimstone, and her novel Black Light. I had a difficult time with 2004's Mortal Love, as I felt there was a rather tortured effort to make it more "literary" than its predecessors and the result was a beautifully written fever dream of a book that was just too hard to follow. So, I was curious to see what Generation Loss would be like, and in some ways, it seems to be something of a departure. I liked it, mind you, but there were some elements missing that usually surface in her books (the rich and evocative use of language, the supernatural element), and I could not quite figure out what kind of book this was meant to be. Horror story? Mystery? Fantasy? About halfway through, I had to stop and do an Internet search to see what I could find about the book, and was lucky enough to come across an interview wherein Ms Hand states that in GL, she attempts to cut down on the use of what she terms "purple" prose, and that she decided to dispense with the supernatural. Once I had this sorted out, I was able to sit back and just take the story on face value without waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Especially as the story winds its way to the end, due to the hints dropped here and there and because of the extremely spooky, Halloween-like atmosphere, I kept expecting (hoping for, actually!) some disaffected old god to step out from one of the bare and chilly trees, but you can relax: it's not going to happen, at least not in this book, although the sinister possibility does seem to be just a breath away.

So, just in case anyone else is wondering what kind of book this is going to be: it's a pretty straightforward story of a woman in one of the worst downward spirals I have ever seen, and not how she redeems herself, necessarily, but perhaps how she finds a place for herself. Generation Loss is the story of Cassandra Neary, a washed-up relic of the New York 70s punk scene. Cass is a photographer briefly famous for a series of shocking photographs, including some taken of a victim of a drug overdose found lying in the street. It's worth noting that upon discovering the body, no one, not even Cass, bothers to call the police. After all, he's already dead, what can anyone do? This scene is meant to illustrate Cass's utter disassociation from her own and other people's humanity, and does so very effectively, I might add. (I was reading this while clutching a strap on the train home, and my gasp of horror briefly alarmed my fellow strap-hangers.) I liked that Cass's problems are not merely presented as moral failings that she could correct if she wanted to; at one point, there is a brief, almost glossed-over mention of a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, although Cass certainly never seeks treatment. At any rate, over the 30 years since her incredibly brief near-glory, she works in the back room of a bookstore, has a series of affairs and one-night stands, and is drunk and/ or stoned most of the time. Her nickname is "Scary" Neary, and quite frankly, if Cass were real, I'd be scared to death of her too. Whatever glamour might have once clung to this all-too-real embodiment of the idea of "heroin chic" has long been replaced by desperation. At one point, Cass says that she is what parents are afraid what their children will become. Out of what seems to be pity, a friend sends Cass to Maine to interview an iconic photographer. Once in Maine, Cass begins to feel oddly at home as she meets the down-and-out denizens of the area. But there is a mystery afoot: young people and animals have been disappearing for quite some time. This mystery plays out resolutely and somewhat quietly in the background as Cass meets the photographer and her son and spends a few days with them, until the highly disturbing denouement. There are some themes here that deal with the nature of artistic genius, what happens when it disappears, how one copes when genius cannot be maintained, and how the loss or gain of it can be literally maddening depending on what you are willing to do for it. In some ways, there is an idea here adapted from Mortal Love, presented for the post-punk world.

I was a little disappointed that the supernatural element was omitted, as this is one of the things I enjoy most about Liz Hand's books. The language was indeed pared down, another disappointment to me, because I think she has such an incredible gift for language. But even so, the story is immensely atmospheric. Coastal Maine as portrayed here becomes a character in its own right... and also makes me understand why the last time I visited, the locals weren't nearly as pleased to see me as I was to see them.

No one writes like Elizabeth Hand. Joyce Carol Oates has her "Handian" moments, but then she turns around and takes off in equally wonderful, but very different directions. No, Hand is unique. Silken prose; deft characterizations; environmental descriptions which accelerate the real into the hyper- and surreal. Plots thick as the Maine fogs and storms, and dark, dark mindtwists that fascinate, enchant, as they startle and disgust. This book, like her entire oeuvre, is compelling reading and not to be missed for fans. To those new to the work of Elizabeth Hand, this would serve as a powerful introduction, capturing and captivating from the first page. Those who love JCO or just adore great prose styling like that of Guy Gavriel Kay or Isabel Allende or Donna Tartt or Poppy Z. Brite or the master himself, Marcel Proust will find so much to love and enjoy here.

Damaged goods. Punk music scene photographer Cass "Scary" Neary achieves a sort of aberrant notoriety with her book "Dead Girls". Drawn to the nihilistic mentality of the 70s punk movement, the drug-fueled Cass revels in anti-materialistic rebellion, careless of her body, pushing to the edge and over, increasingly drawn to the pure, if dark, images of subjects no longer animated by a life force. Enamored of the bridge between here and gone, Cass lurks with her camera in shadowy corners, filthy alleys, recording the last moments of wasted lives. Her second book barely acknowledged, Cass remains inspired by those photographers who capture the stark underbelly of the real world. Thirty years later, Neary is as disconnected as ever, living frugally, seeking respite in drugs and alcohol. When she is offered a gig interviewing her idol, the iconic photographer Aphrodite Kamestos, who lives on a secluded island off the coast of Maine, a more-seasoned Cass is drawn one more time into an adventure that is as treacherous as it is seductive.

Danger is familiar to a woman who still bears the scars of a traumatic encounter in a vacant lot ("It's always 4 a.m. beneath a broken street lamp."), her instinctively ignoring warning signs to pay homage to a long love affair with the eye of the camera, the infinite beauty of genius. Such is the early work of Aphrodite, removed from the prying eyes of hangers-on and acolytes. To be in the presence of such talent is its own reward, regardless of Aphrodite's reaction to any intrusion. From the familiar squalor of her digs in New York City, Cass plunges into the heart-stopping chill of Maine, ill-prepared but determined to garner some nugget, proof that her long search for perfection is not in vain. Genius is like fool's gold, irresistible. Accidentally meeting Aphrodite's son the night before her choppy passage to Paswegas Island, Cass is jarred by a vague intuition of danger, distracted as well by a profusion of posters of the lost, tattered notices, "Have you seen this person"? A world-weary survivor, Cass's instincts are self-serving, cynical, a driven woman whose hopefulness is buried under years of disaffection and regret, her imagined and drug-addled responses routinely confrontational.

Her passage into unfamiliar territory sprinkled with epithets, Hand's protagonist challenges us to see beyond the façade, to care about Cass in spite of her behavior, blazing through the eccentric lives of island residents, sniffing out dishonesty, danger and genius in equal measure. Island dramas tragically play out, Cass the unlikely catalyst who is more in sync with her surroundings than she will admit. In an adrenaline-shot climax, Cass meets genius and evil face to face, haunted by the hypnotic images that call to her artist's soul. A provocative and unpredictable character, Cass is compelling in her abandon, her struggle to reclaim sanity in the face of annihilation, a prickly, surprising heroine. Hand captures that most elusive of subjects, the artist's quest for the perfect, redemptive image and the chaos that attends such vision. Never ethereal or pure, this is murky territory, strewn with despair and failure, as heady as the first injection of heroin into a throbbing vein, a reckless impulse to discover the Holy Grail or know the searing touch of the hand of God. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

...and by that I mean the main character's journey. Wow.

Hand does a terrific job of inserting subtle taps in between brick-in-the face punches, both on the mirco-level of almost passing remarks in the middle of a scene and on the macro-level of Cass Neary's progress through the story. The result is an amazingly cross-complementary cooperation between the main character's redemption and the narrative structure and language of the book itself.

What the heck does that mean? Well, without giving away any spoilers (I hope), it means that the evolution out of a private hell and into reenfranchisement with the rest of humanity comes through in both character actions and the broader subject matter and narrative focus of the entire book -- and one half of that feeds the other half so delicately that I didn't pick up on it until days later. Yes, this is a book that stays with you. (Anything more I might say would both sound unforgivably academic and could taint the experience for someone who hasn't read it yet.)

I think all of this is even more impressive when considering that Hand *hated* writing this book. Fortunately for the rest of us, she pressed on. Read it.

If you were expecting science fiction or fantasy, this is not your Elizabeth Hand book (try her first hit novel, Winterlong: A Novel).

With that out of the way, this is a well-researched, character-driven thriller, and in my opinion the best Hand novel to date. I'd definitely put it in my top 10 of books read this year. I think the author worked hard to make Generation Loss more accessible than her earlier books by keeping the pace moving and keeping the vocabulary at the high school level. She displays her usual flair for description and keen eye for characters on the fringe of society.

The novel begins with our down-and-out noire heroine, Cassandra Neary. Once a moderately successful art photographer, she has given up on her art career and started living paycheck to paycheck as a bookstore stockroom employee. A call from an acquaintance sends her to an isolated island community off the coast of Maine to interview the photographer whose work had first inspired her own work. Unable to resist, she heads out to the islands to meet her idol. Cassandra is understandable but not predictable, and her sarcastic humor and temptation to cause mischief make her endearing without being approachable. I almost could have skipped the action/thriller portion of the book and just kept playing voyeur into Cassandra's life. Overall, I would highly recommend this novel to people who want a creepy and fascinating summer read.

I am new to Elizabeth Hand, and tried "Generation Loss" because of its unusual themes of Maine, art/photography, punk, and more. Hmm, what was she going to do with that? The result was crisply done, yet somewhat creepy, without a bunch of detours into background and filler that a lesser writer might have indulged in so as not to "waste" research. As two fitting examples, I learned enough about Maine and about the art scene to be interested and not overwhelmed.

Cass Neary, as the burned-out artist stumbling through life, is largely unappealing and unsympathetic. Perhaps Ms. Hand went a bit overboard there, or perhaps I am too simplistic and sentimental in preferring main characters with a positive attribute or two. Even as she gets involved in the mystery and takes decisive action, Cass is still far from angelic. That's cool, because an epiphany that changed Cass into a completely different person would have been grossly out of place.

I liked the idea of tying a plot to photography, which seemed quite fresh. Maine served as a fine backdrop, too, with local color. Who needs another art-oriented story playing out entirely in NYC or LA? Some of the edge was taken off, however, because I guessed a couple of the key secrets well before the end. Maybe I got lucky or maybe the clues were clear or maybe there weren't very many options possible. Whatever it was, that was ok, because the crispness propelled everything along to a sharp ending.

Elizabeth Hand ("Waking the Moon," "Mortal Love," among others), known for her poetic and utterly dark fantasies, attempts a more conventional Gothic tale this time, and succeeds beautifully. The characters are memorable; the conclusion is crisp. There are no wasted scenes.

Her protagonist, Cass Neary, a burned-out sociopathic leftover from the 1970s punk era, was "famous long ago" for a photography book in which she photographed dead people.

Now, an old friend from back in the day gives her an assignment to interview another formerly famous photographer, who lives alone on an island in Northern Maine.

Cass soon finds herself enmeshed in a world of missing teens, former hippies, ruined buildings, and mysterious animals--among other things--and Ms. Hand, with her tricky plot, dares you to figure out where she's going with the tale before she's ready to reveal the answers. (I doubt you will figure things out.)

And, along the way, some of her readers will learn a great deal about the almost vanished art of taking pictures with film cameras, while others will nod and smile, and remember the days of grainy Kodak Tri-X black and white.

I was surprised that Ms. Hand has written something so conventional, something so within the boundaries of the Gothic (I was casting the movie version in my head--something I've never done with any of this author's novels before), and equally surprised how well she brought it off.

Cass is a has-been photographer in her 40s who achieved momentary fame as a chronicler of the wasted punk scene in New York City in the late 1970s. Since then has been a slow slide into obscurity and despair; she's now as dead as you can be while still having a pulse.

Then she gets an offer to go to rural Maine to interview a reclusive woman photographer who once pioneered a dreamlike photography technique. Cass leaves her rancid NYC apartment for the harsh and frozen shore of Maine. There she meets a strange young man who simultaneously repels and attracts her, and a troubled teenage girl who will go missing. Those are just the first of the lunatics and psychopaths she meets. As she gets better acquainted with the townfolk, she uncovers a dark secret that stretches back to the reckless actions of mystical group of drop-outs in the late 1960s.

Cass herself is an unforgettable character who gets several very funny lines. Aside from the pleasures of accompanying such a complex person through such a spooky landscape, you learn a lot about photography in a subtle way that never slows the action. This is a precise, realistic, and haunting mystery. Longer review at BellaOnline Mystery Books (BellaOnline-dot-com).

Elizabeth Hand is known for fiction with a speculative or "fantastic" element and this story, while spooky and a little psychologically bent, is mostly straightforward. An intriguing protagonist in interesting circumstances to start off the book is talked into visiting a fascinating locale to interview an even more interesting subject. One disappointment I had with the book was that the "interesting subject" never ended up offering that interview, or anything else to pay off the promise of that character, but this is offset by the unexpectedly strange milieu the main character stumbles into.

There may be some minor flaws here, but this is one of my favorite novels of the past five years or so. Though I became interesting in Hand because of her dark fantasy, I'd love to see her write more of this kind of thing, and was very excited to learn recently she plans a sequel.

It's been some time since I read this book, and still images and moments come back to me from time to time. I accept this novel is not for everyone (it is sad, there is emotional and other types of violence). I would suggest giving it a go.