Customer Reviews

Saffron And Brimstone: Strange Stories

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Imagine a postpunk Shirley Jackson, and you have Elizabeth Hand<. Like Jackson's oeuvre, Hand's stories are heavy on atmosphere and the supernatural occurrences have psychological underpinnings. Her characters are outsiders, artists and damaged people, and when they don't live in isolation, they live at the periphery of society, in various subcultures.

The opening "Cleopatra Brimstone," the most conventional `horror' story here, sets the template. A plain Jane science geek girl gets sexually molested, which starts a transformation in her. Mousy Jane moves to London, gets a job at the London Zoo categorizing butterflies during the day, and becomes the glamorous Goth minx Cleopatra Brimstone at night. Cleopatra has a seductive, mysterious power that Jane doesn't have that ultimately seals her fate. The climax of the story is morally disturbing, rather than visceral. The writing is lush and richly descriptive, and Hand's attention to realistic detail anchors her tale.

Several pieces here are clearly autobiographical: "Pavane for a Prince of the Air" is about the death of a hippie shaman and has vague allusions to magic, but is mostly an ode to an odd, beloved free-spirit. "Wonderwall," set in early 80s DC, is Hand's eulogy for both her wayward youth and her artistic muse, here portrayed as a queer actor and his alter ego, who succumbs to AIDS. `Calypso in Berlin' is an effectively creepy monologue about the titular muse making her way in the modern artscene.

Lovers of literary fantasy and modern gothic fiction would do well to check this handsome collection out. Four of the stories appeared in a limited edition volume called "Bibliomancy," which means `book magic.' Bibliomancy is precisely what Hand does with her craft.

This collection seems to weave in and out of autobiography--now close and real, then imagined and surreal. Even when straying from the concrete experiences of Hand's life, there remains a magnetic resonance with what I suspect is her core self, as she imagines it, as she embodies it in her private view, her "lost domain."
Hand's writing glows with color, pulses with strangeness, and weaves in a mastery of detail from entomology to Greek myth with a sureness rarely seen in current fiction. Shimmering descriptions abound, such as one about a fox: "It was grinning at me, I could see the thin rind of its gums, its yellow eyes shining as though lit from within by candles." For Hand, the world is a dazzling, complex place; each square foot of earth teems with life.
The beautifully crafted "The Least Trumps" is perhaps the most evocative piece, replete with hints and feints and magic set against human relationships that are fresh and strongly felt.
At the end, the reader may briefly feel as if he's on the cusp of understanding the author's stories, but then this belief falls away like a foggy scrim, leaving the reader tantalized by all that he hasn't grasped.
An elusive and exotic book!

Saffron and Brimstone was my first exposure to the beautifully evocative prose of Elizabeth Hand, and I cannot wait to get my hands on one of her full-length novels! Her storytelling is unparalleled in anything I have read lately; she is truly a master at her craft and it shows in this collection of short stories. The stories included run the gamut from horror to fantasy, magic realism to experimental fiction. No two are alike, but they all share certain elements of compelling story-telling that characterize Hand's narrative style in this collection: beautifully worded description, lush and discerning metaphor, a way of showing the reader exactly what is needed to draw the conclusions and realizations that a lesser writer would have felt obliged to say outright, a propensity towards vagueness that only seems to sharpen rather than blur the truth of the pieces, and an attention to detail that firmly grounded the fantastic elements of the stories in startling realism. A careful reading reveals that each and every event, character, detail of setting, word and phrase has been carefully selected to evoke a particular response in the reader. In "The Saffron Gatherers," this discernment is seen in the way that Hand uses Grecian-derived diction in seemingly throw-away sentences to build her comparison, word by word, of the modern world verging on global disaster to that of the lost civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome. In this and many other ways she uses contrast to excellent effect.

Of the eight stories included in Saffron and Brimstone, my favorite was "The Least Trumps," a story about a middle-aged tattoo artist that comes across an almost used up pack of tarot cards with an ability to change what is. Like many of the other stories, "The Least Trumps" features a female protagonist living in a degree of isolation and stagnation who finds a way to break out of her rut in a rather magical way. Indeed isolation, whether physical, emotional, or both is a theme that threads through almost all of these "strange" stories. Despite this, each story has its own unique feel or ambience, from the mixed folklore, Charles de Lint-esque "Pavane for a Prince of the Air" to the chillingly dark psycho-drama "Cleopatra Brimstone," and the drug-induced blur of narrative in "Wonderwall." The last four ultra short stories comprise a sequence that meditates in several different forms and multi-varied perspectives on a number of issues, including the artist's relationship with his/her muse. These last four are more experimental and seemed a little less developed to me, both in terms of story and craft. As a result the longer beginning stories appealed to me more, though I appreciated the subtle complexity and ambition of the ending sequence. On the whole, highly recommended. I can't wait to try something else by Ms. Hand!

As a fan of contemporary fantasy, I was pleased that a copy of Saffron and Brimstone found its way to my bookshelf. Elizabeth Hand's gentle voice and disciplined eye made me breeze through "Cleopatra Brimstone," which I found intriguingly horrifying, though the outcome was not completely unexpected. Her "Pavane for a Prince of Air" struck a more personal chord with me as it dealt with the pain of loss, speaking of 'the impossible bargains I made at three o' clock in the morning with the pagan deities flitting about the room: what I would give up to save him, which digits, which hand, which leg; eyesight, the power of speech, an ear; two; my tongue (p 73-74).' I was beginning to like Ms. Hand more and more, even if I wasn't taking to "The Least Trumps" and "Wonderwall" well.

But it was "The Lost Domain: Four Story Variations" that kept me tethered to her engaging prose. Here, she speaks of eternal nymphs and muses, of what has been lost, of what has been forgotten. "Kronia" is my favorite of the quartet, with its simple flavor yet somehow wonderfully disjointed narrative. It has a certain cadence that makes reading it out loud a lovely exercise.

Fans of gritty spec fic may find Ms. Hand's kind of fantasy almost vulnerable, but there is a strength in the way she weaves her words that makes you believe that there is true magic here.

I've only known Elizabeth Hand's work through her stunning novel, _Mortal Love_. I was most anxious to delve into this collection after reading reviews of Bibliomancy. Hand is such a good writer, she can't really disappoint, and in the first story she really put the dread in me... I had to put the book down awhile before getting up the nerve to finish that one and go on. My favorite story from the first section however, is _The Least Trumps_,I thought that was just stellar, except... it cried out, to me anyway, to be a much longer piece. There were so many layers of relational complexity between the characters that I longed to have fleshed out and maybe concluded. Perhaps her ambiguity was deliberate, but the writing was so good otherwise, one could hardly help wish for some revelation at least of how the magic worked that transmuted the Trumps to reality and the perceptions of the characters living therein.

The last section, _The Lost Domain_, was very creative, maybe not evenly so, _Calypso in Berlin_ and _The Saffron Gatherers_ being the standouts of the quartet. Overall, I just reveled in reading her once again, how she deals with ideas, themes, change, loss, connection, separation.

I first read the lead-off story in this collection, "Cleopatra Brimstone," in the anthology Poe's Children (edited by Peter Straub). This story of a young entomologist who moves to London in the aftermath of rape was the best thing in Straub's anthology and turns out to be the best thing in Saffron and Brimstone too. That's not at all to say the rest of this collection is lacking.

The very best fictional narrative has the feel of true personal history, enough to inspire the reader to check the writer's bio and figure out whether or not certain events from the story really happened. That's how most of these stories felt to me, like places I have seen, and like true life events a storyteller has conveyed to me half-reluctantly and with some sadness. Every story overflows with lush imagery and vivid details. The stories may not be connected by character or events, but a kind of quiet melancholy hangs over them.

It's always interesting to see a writer shift focus in terms of genre and subject matter. Here, as in her novel Generation Loss, Hand generally tones down the fantastical elements more common in her earlier work. The stories feel exotic, even when nothing impossible or otherworldly is happening. Perhaps her greatest strength is the ability to convey a lifelike sense of place, and of events which might have truly happened. Though in my own reading I tend to enjoy the otherworldly and fantastic, I'm hesitant to say I wish Elizabeth Hand would write more in that direction. Whatever the degree of fantasticality in these stories, Hand's use of language is so elegant and her characters and situations so engaging, I'll gladly read whatever she chooses to write regardless of genre considerations. Here, as in Generation Loss, she does something that feels very real.

Highly recommended for those readers who enjoy lush prose and human-focused stories with an otherworldly feel even if they take place in our own world. Readers with a preference for more overt genre elements, as well as those wishing for a greater focus on plot rather than character, may enjoy this less than I did. As for me, this book on top of Generation Loss are enough for me to elevate Elizabeth Hand to among the top handful of authors whose work I'll explore with most eagerness. From here, it's on to Waking the Moon or Winterlong.

Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand: a wonderful collection of short stories, some with a fantastical bent, a few with some horror components. I especially liked "The Least Trumps" about a woman who finds some unusual Tarot cards and the influence of a series of fantasty books that literally change the world.

This collection is a must read for fans of Hand. Although the body of work is inconsistant; this is a jewel of a read. Winterlong remains the best title but these stories are a good follow up for those newer readers.
This is a good solid step toward a wider audience.

Elizabeth Hand's intoxicating story collection "Saffron and Brimstone" has the subtitle of "strange stories." Exactly so. The opening tale, "Cleopatra Brimstone," features a plain American Jane with an interest in entomology, who morphs into a London-dwelling goth chick who renames herself Cleopatra Brimstone and develops a unique method of collecting butterflies.

The next tale, "Pavane for a Prince of the Air," is an elegy for a dying hippie and an elegy for the era in which the author came of age.

Then comes the delightful (and sunnier) "The Least Trumps," in which a tattoo artist finds a deck of tarot cards at a rummage sale and discovers they have the ability to change the past.

"Wonderwall" (the reason for story's title will soon become apparent) returns us to the scene of the author's masterful novel "Waking the Moon"--"The University of Archangels and Saint John the Divine" (actually Catholic University) in Washington D.C. It's another ode to the author's past, or so I would suppose.

The last four stories come under the rubric of "The Lost Domain: Four Story Variations," a series of understated, impressionist, prose poems that will probably leave you giddy. "Kronia" deals with memory; "Calypso in Berlin" is about the creation of art (and love); "Echo" is narrated by a woman who might be the last person on earth (or not), while it riffs on the Greek myth of Echo and Narkissos (as Ms. Hand spells it); "The Saffron Gatherers" is about art collecting and real estate, and . . . and then something happens.

Exhilarating, uplifting, wondrous, and certainly strange.

I have been a fan of Elizabeth Hand since high school and haven't read anything of hers for a couple of years. When I found this book I was capitivated. Her words and worlds suck you in and don't let you go until they are over. She always leaves you wanting more!