CANR
WORK TITLE: A Haunting on the Hill
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.elizabethhand.com/
CITY: Lincolnville
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 323
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 29, 1957, in Yonkers, NY; daughter of Edward (an attorney) and Alice Ann (a social worker) Hand; children: Callie Anne Silverthorn.
EDUCATION:Catholic University of America, B.A., 1984.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, archival researcher, 1979-86, and cofounder of archival videodisc program; Stonecoast MFA Program, instructor; Maine College of Art, faculty.
AWARDS:Philip K. Dick Award finalist, for Winterlong, Aestival Tide, and Icarus Descending; James Tiptree, Jr., Award, 1995, and Mythopoeic Society Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, 1996, both for Waking the Moon; Nebula Award for best novella, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and World Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Convention, both 1995, both for “Last Summer at Mars Hill”; Battersea Arts Center award finalist, Fringe Theater Festival (London, England), 1997, for one-act play, The Have-Nots; International Horror Guild Award, for novella “Cleopatra Brimstone” and short story “Pavane for a Prince of the Air”; World Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Convention, 2004, for Bibliomancy; Nebula Award for best short story, 2007, for “Echo”; Shirley Jackson Award for best novel, 2008, for Generation Loss; Best novella prize, World Fantasy Awards, 2008, for Illyria; best novella prize, World Fantasy Awards, 2011, for Bellerophon; Novella Prize, Shirley Jackson Awards, 2016, for Wylding Hall; Inkpot Award, Comic-Con International, 2018; special award, Shirley Jackson Awards, 2023, for A Haunting on the Hill.
RELIGION: Roman Catholic.WRITINGS
Also author or coauthor audiobook scripts, including Anna and the King, 2001; author of The Frenchman (television pilot). Contributor to “X-Files” and “Millennium” fiction series, based on television shows. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Washington Post Book World, Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, Salon, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Village Voice.
SIDELIGHTS
Elizabeth Hand emerged on the science fiction scene after publishing only three short works. While her novels and short stories are geared toward an adult audience, several of her books have appeal for young-adult readers. Many of her movie tie-ins and novelizations also appeal to younger readers, including her contributions to the “Star Wars” novel series. She has also worked on comic books as a cocreator, with Paul Witcover, of the DC Comics series Anima, and her novel Black Light and others feature young-adult narrators. In a review of her short-story collection Last Summer at Mars Hill, a Publishers Weekly critic noted that Hand produces “beautiful writing” that is tempered with “healthy doses of skepticism.” Noting the author’s lyrical style, Science Fiction Weekly Online contributor Nick Gevers called Hand “one of American literature’s finest prose poets of the fantastic.”
Hand’s first published short story, “Prince of Flowers,” appeared in Twilight Zone and is a fantasy story about a woman, Helen, who works in a museum in Washington, DC. Helen’s job is to open new crates and inventory the strange objects and papers received by the museum. Among the items she takes home to liven up her apartment is a “spirit puppet,” an Indonesian item that had been packed away in storage for nearly a century. “On the Town Route,” which first appeared in Pulphouse, concerns a woman who travels with an ice-cream-truck vendor through an impoverished area of Virginia, where they distribute ice cream to the poor people of the region until an accident disrupts their charitable efforts. “The Boy in the Tree,” which was published shortly before Hand’s first novel, Winterlong, is noticeably more akin to science fiction due to its futuristic setting: a research facility that treats psychopaths.
In 1995’s Waking the Moon, Katherine “Sweeney” Cassidy, who is beginning her first year at the University of the Archangels, accidentally discovers the existence of the Benandanti, a secret order that has been covertly manipulating the world’s governments and other institutions. The university is a haven for the Benandanti, who for ages have guarded against the return of their ancient foe, Othiym Lunarsa, the Moon Goddess. While the Benandanti use the university as a training ground for their proteges, most of the students are normal college kids who are completely unaware of the Benandanti and their doings. Sweeney’s life is significantly altered after she becomes involved with two of the Benandanti’s cadets—Angelica di Rienzi and Oliver Crawford—and she begins to learn things she was never meant to know.
In a review of Waking the Moon in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Robert K.J. Killheffer described Hand’s earlier works: “Hand brought lush prose and vibrant, decadent imagery to a plot and scenario that harked back to [science fiction’s] pulpy roots, a tale of post-apocalypse America garnished with cyborgs and mad androids, genetic experimentation, ruined cities and desolate wastes. The mixture worked, somehow, making this familiar fare fresh and vigorous in her bold and colorful treatment, but there was always a sense of tension between Hand’s writing and her material.” “In Waking the Moon, ” continued Killheffer, “there’s a pervasive tension, too, though here it comes from the juxtaposition of sorcery, vengeful goddesses, secret societies, and ritual sacrifice on the one hand and the mundane realities of Sweeney’s life on the other.” Killheffer concluded: “ Waking the Moon, intentionally or not, provides some very provocative reflections on the continuing strife between the sexes. It’s also a gripping story, with some exquisitely creepy moments, some lovely lyrical prose, and some vivid and memorable characters.” “Blending the ancient with the modern, the fantastic with the real, Hand has created a violently sensual fable helped by smart pacing and vibrant prose,” contended a Publishers Weekly contributor.
Published in 1997, Glimmering is set in a world overcome with social and scientific calamities. It is 1999, and HIV-positive publisher Jack Finnegan’s world is transformed after he meets Leonard Thorpe, who possesses a magical elixir that cures him. In Glimmering, “intersecting vignettes of decay are rendered in language that has an incantatory beauty even as she unflinchingly attempts to describe death and morbid sexual acts,” asserted a reviewer for Publishers Weekly.
In the novel Black Light, Hand tells the story of high-school senior Charlotte Moylan and Charlotte’s godfather, filmmaker Axel Kern. The notorious Kern arrives in Charlotte’s hometown of Kamensic to host a Halloween party replete with drugs and dark and perverse characters, including various members of the Benandanti and the Malandanti, who are, as a critic for Kirkus Reviews explained, “two opposing groups of magicians … [that] struggle to control human destiny.” After experiencing unsettling visions and meeting the strange Professor Warnick, Charlotte learns that her godfather is deeply involved in a dangerous conspiracy. Jackie Cassada praised Hand’s “lucid style” in the Library Journal, and a reviewer for Publishers Weekly declared that the book “should strongly appeal to aficionados of sophisticated horror.”
Four of Hand’s novellas, one of which was previously published online, appeared together in print in Bibliomancy, published in England. (Three of these stories also appear in Saffron and Brimstone, published in the United States.) Her novella “Cleopatra Brimstone” gives the story of a young woman’s recovery from rape a horrific twist as the injured protagonist channels her rage and lust for vengeance and morphs into an insectile serial killer. “Pavane for a Prince of the Air” is a semiautobiographical story about the death of a friend. Both of these novellas were nominated for an International Horror Guild Award. “The Least Trumps” deals with tattooing and tarot, while “Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol” features the character Tony Maroni and an old-time children’s television program. Hand told Nick Gevers in Science Fiction Weekly Online that the story is a tribute to Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol: “I just love Dickens, and Christmas, and I’ve always wanted to write a Christmas story.” Reviewing this collected short fiction, Paul di Filippo, in a review for the Washington Post Book World, noted that “Hand’s close attention to the cherished dailiness of life is matched only by the subtlety of her fantastical conceits.”
Mortal Love delves into artistic inspiration: essentially, what drives artists to create art. Hand pictures the inspiration of various male artists as a beautiful woman, a woman whose name changes depending on the artist to whom she appears; she eventually drives at least one of these men into madness. “On one level I think Mortal Love served as a way of examining the source of my own creative activity, by looking at that of other writers or visual artists,” Hand explained to Gevers in Science Fiction Weekly Online. Washington Post Book World reviewer Lawrence Norfolk summed up the novel, writing that “ Mortal Love is at once a painting in prose, an investigation into artistic obsession and a re-evaluation.” Noting that the book was marketed to mainstream audiences as well as science-fiction and fantasy readers, a Publishers Weekly critic commented that Hand’s “timeless tale of desire and passion should reach many readers beyond [the author’s] usual fantasy base.”
Published in 1990, Winterlong (the first installment in an eponymous series) describes a future Earth where biological weapons have destroyed much of the planet’s population. Wendy and Raphael, twins who have been separated since birth, travel across the nightmarish landscape, facing danger from mutated cannibalistic children and deadly exotic plants. As the twins reunite, they enact the legend of the Final Ascension, which will decide the future of humankind. D. Douglas Fratz wrote in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers: “There are some marvelous characters here, but none seems to act on his or her own volition; all feel driven by unseen forces.” Sherry Hoy, reviewing Winterlong in the Voice of Youth Advocates, stated that Hand “weaves a tale that is achingly haunting and disquieting, surreal yet compelling.” The novels Aestival Tide and Icarus Descending continue the topics and themes Hand first develops in Winterlong, and many reviewers have viewed the three as a series. Themes in these novels also appear in Hand’s award-winning Waking the Moon and Black Light.
Illyria, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2008, was first published in 2007 in England before being published in the United States by Viking in 2010. The novel begins the “Illyria” series and tells the story of Madeline and Rogan who are cousins that were born on the same day. Growing up in 1970s Yonkers, they both come from large families where they are the youngest of six children. The cousins even live near one another in houses purchased by their great grandmother, a famous stage actress. All the cousins in the family are close, but none are quite as close as Maddy and Rogan, who are deeply in love by the age of fourteen. When they are cast in their school’s production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, they are forced to face their separate talents and futures. Horn Book contributor Lauren Adams noted: “Hand’s pungently atmospheric novel portrays illicit sexual love and theatrical talent as matters nearly sacred.” In Illyria, “the author captures Maddy and Rogan’s passion, both for the theatre and each other, beautifully,” contended a reviewer on the Ex Libris Web site. Heather Pittman, in a review for Voice of Youth Advocates, also commented on the novel’s characters: “The characters are fully realized and compelling. Maddy and Rogan’s relationship is hauntingly beautiful and unapologetic.” Courtney Jones, who reviewed the novel for Booklist, felt that “the subtlety and raw ache of the prose, and the realistic portrayal of artistic lives, triumphantly heralds Hand’s arrival into youth fiction.”
The “Illyria” series continues with Radiant Days, which follows two characters in two different times and places. Merle lives in Washington, DC, in the late 1970s. She is a graffiti artist who is known by her tagging signature: a sun that says “Radiant Days” on it. Her renown is all she has; Merle has no friends or family, and she lives in a squat. In between her misadventures, readers follow the exploits of Arthur, a late-nineteenth-century poet who heads to France (the character is ostensibly the poet Arthur Rimbaud). Hand’s version of Arthur is a feckless writer who enjoys his freedom and his growing renown. The story, according to a Kirkus Reviews critic, is “suffused with powerful images of light, this intensely lyrical portrait of two androgynous young artists … expands the themes of artistic isolation and passion.” A Publishers Weekly contributor offered praise as well, asserting that Hand’s “troubled, beautifully drawn characters make the heart ache.” Yet, in the words of Voice of Youth Advocates columnist Mandy R. Simon: “Hand writes the scenes and characters well, but it is unlikely that teens will be drawn to this story without a special interest in poetry or art.”
While Hand continues to work on novelizations of media works as well as on original science fiction and fantasy works, she has also moved into more mainstream fiction. Discussing the novel Generation Loss, she described the story as more gritty than her previous works. Hand lives with her two children in a home located on the coast of Maine—the setting of Generation Loss —“within shouting distance of her cottage studio,” according to an essay on her home page.
Hand’s Generation Loss, which begins the “Cass Neary,” series is the first of her novels to eschew fantasy altogether. Instead, it draws on elements of the horror and suspense genres. Generation Loss tells the story of Cassandra Neary, a “burnt out relic of a photographer from the 1970s punk scene,” declared an interviewer on Abebooks.com, “who is given a mercy assignment to interview a reclusive photographer in Maine. On arrival she finds herself in an old mystery that is still claiming lives.” The key to Cass’s dream lies in the body of work of Aphrodite Kamestos, a refugee from the 1960s counterculture scene. Cass herself made her reputation a decade later photographing similar people in like situations, and she counted Aphrodite as one of her inspirations. Kamestos has ensconced herself on a small island off the Maine coast, surrounded by the remnants of a commune she had helped found decades earlier. On her journey to meet her mentor, Cass will “meet strange natives and unreconstructed hippies,” explained Strange Horizons Web site contributor Matthew Cheney; “she’ll uncover secrets, drink gallons of Jack Daniels and pop some ADD-generation speed, watch her dreams and idols die, fall in something resembling the possibility of love, and locate a serial killer—all in the course of finding herself.”
Hand explores new territory in Generation Loss. Each of her characters—from Cassandra to Aphrodite—is severely damaged by their experiences, and each has found different ways of coping with their memories and their feelings. This, reviewers agree, is most noticeable in her protagonist. Hand “has set Cass up to be an anti-hero, dehumanized after her rape by an assailant she failed to fight off; the chance to become a real hero is a possibility of quick redemption,” stated Melissa Albert on the Bookslut Web site. “The novel,” wrote interviewer Jeff Vandermeer in another Bookslut Web site review, “deals with the limits and limitations of art while being both thriller and mystery novel at the same time. Narrator Cass Neary is a hypnotic blend of hidden vulnerability, selfishness, and curiosity.” “I feel like, in the end, she demonstrates real courage—she’s reckless and arrogant and self-destructive, but she’s also scared sh*ttless a lot of the time,” Hand told Vandermeer. “That’s why she drinks and dopes up nonstop. I absolutely understand the impulse behind that. So her decision to act, to attempt to save someone else when she herself is terrified and chronically self-absorbed, is a big deal for her. And, I think, an act of moral courage in an otherwise deeply amoral character.” “Cass is a complex and thoroughly believable character,” stated a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “who behaves selfishly—sometimes despicably—yet still compels reader sympathy.” “Brilliantly written and completely original,” concluded Booklist contributor David Pitt, “Hand’s novel is an achievement with a capital A.”
Cass appears again in Available Dark, and she continues to drink and take drugs to avoid herself and her life. She has been connected to a suspicious death in Maine and police are looking for her, so Cass heads to Helsinki to avoid them. When she arrives, Cass discovers five pictures taken by a famous Finnish artist. The photos depict newly dead bodies, arranged in tableaus: reimagined scenes from Finnish fairy tales. Cass recommends the images for a collector back in the States, and then she leaves for Iceland to meet up with her ex, Quinn O’Boyle. Unfortunately, it does not seem that Quinn wants to be found. Hand then adds in a series of murders to heighten the suspense. “A flash of incandescence counters final threats of death,” Michele Leber stated in Booklist, “and the all-encompassing darkness is leavened by a glimmer of hope.” Cass Neary, writing in Library Journal, was equally laudatory, and she found that Cass “evokes sympathy and admiration despite her tough exterior.” Indeed, a Publishers Weekly critic described Cass as “Hand’s uncompromisingly compromised main character.”
Hard Light begins with Cass’s ongoing search for Quinn. She heads from Iceland to London with nothing but her camera, some drugs, and some money; not to mention her passports (one real and one fake). As she couch surfs her way across London, Cass dips back into the local punk scene. Unfortunately, Quinn is nowhere to be found. All Cass finds is the body of a lapsed punk singer named Poppy. The body count continues to mount, and Cass realizes she may be next when she lands in a remote farmhouse in Cornwall. There, Cass finds herself thrown in with a group of people who knew Poppy, and not all of them liked her. Cass, a Kirkus Reviews critic announced, has “seen the worst side of humanity, but she still maintains a sense of compassion that elevates the mystery and increases its resonance.” Los Angeles Times Online correspondent Steph Cha remarked: “The feel of the novel will stay with me. It flickers with malignant magic, the base and dirty stuff of human life rubbing up against the mystical marvels of art, the unknowable mysteries of history, the awe-inspiring logic of fate. Cass battles more than her fair share of existential despair … but she has an appreciation for the beauty in even the filth of the world that gives this dark novel a glittering sense of wonder.”
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The Book of Lamps and Banners, the last book in the “Cass Neary” series, finds photographer Cass Neary partnering with her ex-con boyfriend Quinn on a treasure hunt for a rare book believed to have been written by Aristotle. Also seeking the book is billionaire tech mogul Tindra Bergstrand who wants to use the text in an app to help people with traumatic memories. But when Tindra disappears and the book dealer is found dead, Cass and Quinn dodge neo-Nazi goons as the trail to the book brings them to an island off the Swedish coast.
With punk and attitude, “Cass Neary is a tough, self-destructive character who still exudes compassion, courage, and love for the beauty and the pain of life-even more so because she recognizes its impermanence,” declared a Kirkus Reviews critic. In Booklist, Christine Tran praised Hand’s portrayal of subcultures, adding: “It’s a wild ride that defies comparison: pill-popping idealist Cass Neary’s obsessive hunt piles on teeth-grinding, story-propelling tension.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked: “That this adventure ends for once on a positive note for Cass…will please series fans.”
In the atmospheric crime novel, Curious Toys, a teenage girl dressed as a boy roams the dangerous Riverview Amusement Park in 1915 Chicago. After the elder daughter of the carnival’s fortune teller disappears, the mother tells her younger daughter Vivian to reinvent herself as a boy named Pim. On her way back from delivering drugs for the carnival’s she-male performer Max, Pim notices a man bring a young girl into the Hell Gate boat ride but emerge alone. The girl’s body is found, launching an investigation. Pim enlists the help of a troubled fictionalized version of real-life reclusive artist Henry Darger to find the killer. “To call the novel and its characters ‘colorful’ is a terrific understatement… Hand skillfully develops each character beyond mere oddity or empty sensation,” noted a writer in Kirkus Reviews.
In an interview with John Crowley at Boston Review, Hand commented on her themes of racism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment in the early 20th century: “I hope that my depiction of that period and its fears and bigotries is realistic enough that readers grasp how similar it was to our own time… while I always try to create as authentic and absorbing a portrait of a period as I can, I love playing with all the what ifs of history.” In Booklist, Christine Tran wrote that the book is “A well-crafted and deliciously unsettling period thriller” that will attract fans of Caleb Carr, while a Publishers Weekly critic commented on the multiple characters with psychological histories, nevertheless, “this remains a phantasmagoric time trip tailor-made for fans of The Devil in the White City.”
Hand provides the first official sequel to Shirley Jackson’s iconic The Haunting of Hill House with A Haunting on the Hill set in the same mansion but with different characters. Struggling playwright Holly Sherwin uses her new grant money to rent the foreboding Hill House mansion to develop and rehearse her play, Witching Night. Moving into the eerie house are Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, and actors Amanda, playing renowned 17th-century witch Elizabeth Sawyer, and Stevie, playing Elizabeth’s friend. Soon the malevolent house groans with warnings, revealing past traumas and insecurities of the guests, cold spots in the rooms, and mysterious voices in the night.
Hand spoke to Kelsey Ford in Powell’s about her homage to Shirley Jackson, saying: “I kept a certain distance between my own work and Jackson’s…I wanted this to be a book that readers familiar with Hill House would enjoy.” Discussing the theme of creative expression, Hand remarked: “The origins and expressions of artistic creation are a recurring theme in my work. I felt like I needed a path into Hill House that would be my own, so having a bunch of artists stay there seemed like a natural way of doing that.”
Noting that Hand pulls back the curtain on Jackson’s classic, Library Journal contributor Lacey Tobias reported: “this haunted house tale stands on its own very spooky legs.” In her tribute to Jackson, Hand opts “for resonance over replication. In a landscape of soulless franchises geared toward quick, shallow hits of fan service, she has the maturity and talent to deliver the follow-up that Jackson’s novel deserves,” according to New York Times Book Review critic Emily C. Hughes.
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BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Newsmakers, Issue 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2007.
Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers, 3rd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1991.
PERIODICALS
Analog Science Fiction & Fact, February, 1991, review of Winterlong, p. 176; April, 1993, Tom Easton, review of Aestival Tide, p. 162; February, 1994, Tom Easton, review of Icarus Descending, p. 160.
Booklist, June 1, 1993, Carl Hays, review of Icarus Descending, p. 1793; February 15, 1998, Nancy Spillman, review of The Frenchman, p. 1026; June 1, 2004, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of Mortal Love, p. 1700; May 1, 2007, David Pitt, review of Generation Loss, p. 36; May 15, 2010, Courtney Jones, review of Illyria. January 1, 2012, Michele Leber, review of Available Dark; September 1, 2019, Christine Tran, review of Curious Toys, p. 50; July 1, 2020, Christine Tran, review of The Book of Lamps and Banners, p. 22; September 2023, Christine Tran, review of A Haunting on the Hill, p. 47.
Books, May 6, 2007, Graham Joyce, review of Generation Loss, p. 6.
Book World, April 1, 2007, review of Generation Loss, p. 8; May 6, 2007, “Road to Ruin,” p. 6.
Detroit Free Press, July 18, 2004, Susan Hall-Balduf, review of Mortal Love.
Entertainment Weekly, April 6, 2007, Sean Howe, review of Generation Loss, p. 80.
Horn Book, July-August, 2010, Lauren Adams, review of Illyria.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1999, review of Black Light, p. 418; May 15, 2004, review of Mortal Love, p. 459; April 15, 2010, Courtney Jones, review of Illyria; February 15, 2012, review of Radiant Days; February 15, 2016, review of Hard Light; August 15, 2019, review of Curious Toys; August 1, 2020, review of The Book of Lamps and Banners; August 1, 2023, review of A Haunting on the Hill.
Lambda Book Report, November 1, 1992, Severna Park, review of Aestival Tide, p. 42.
Library Journal, June 15, 1995, Barbara Maslekoff, review of Waking the Moon, p. 94; March 15, 1997, Susan Hamburger, review of Glimmering, p. 93; April 15, 1999, Jackie Cassada, review of Black Light, p. 148; April 1, 2004, Jennifer Baker, review of Mortal Love, p. 122; January 1, 2012, Christine Perkins, review of Available Dark; September 2023, Lacey Tobias, review of A Haunting on the Hill, p. 87.
Locus, October, 1992, “Aestival Tide,” p. 35; February, 1995, “Waking the Moon,” p. 34; September, 2003, Gary K. Wolfe, review of Bibliomancy, p. 17; October, 2003, Bill Sheehan, review of Bibliomancy, p. 25.
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1, 1995, Robert K.J. Killheffer, review of Waking the Moon, p. 43; August, 1997, review of Glimmering, p. 30; January, 1998, review of Glimmering, p. 38; April, 1999, review of Last Summer at Mars Hill, p. 41.
Mythprint, April, 1997, Eleanor M. Farrell, reviews of Waking the Moon and Glimmering.
New Scientist, May 23, 1998, review of Glimmering, p. 51.
New York Times Book Review, December 9, 1990, review of Winterlong, p. 32; September 12, 1993, Gerald Jonas, “Icarus Descending,” p. 36; September 10, 1995, “Waking the Moon,” p. 46; May 30, 1999, Gerald Jonas, review of Black Light, p. 25; October 29, 2023, Emily C. Hughes, review of A Haunting on the Hill, p. 8.
Publishers Weekly, August 24, 1990, Penny Kaganoff, review of Winterlong, p. 59; July 5, 1993, review of Icarus Descending, p. 68; June 26, 1995, review of Waking the Moon, p. 89; February 3, 1997, review of Glimmering, p. 99; August 10, 1998, review of Last Summer at Mars Hill, March 8, 1999, review of Black Light, p. 51; May 3, 2004, review of Mortal Love, p. 169; February 19, 2007, review of Generation Loss, p. 148; February 20, 2012, review of Radiant Days; November 28, 2011, review of Available Dark; July 1, 2019, review of Curious Toys, p. 43; June 1, 2020, review of The Book of Lamps and Banners, p. 38.
Redsine Seven, January, 2002, Nick Gevers, “Apocalypse Descending: An Interview with Elizabeth Hand.”
Voice of Youth Advocates, April, 1991, Sherry Hoy, review of Winterlong, p. 43; April, 1993, review of Aestival Tide, p. 40; February, 1994, review of Icarus Descending, p. 381; April, 1994, review of Aestival Tide, p. 9; December, 1995, review of Waking the Moon, p. 314; April, 1996, review of Waking the Moon, p. 23; April, 1998, review of The Frenchman, p. 55; April, 2000, review of Black Light, p. 11; August, 2010, Heather Pittman, review of Illyria; April, 2012, Mandy R. Simon, review of Radiant Days.
Washington Post BookWorld, December 14, 2003, Paul di Filippo, review of Bibliomancy, p. 14; June 27, 2004, Lawrence Norfolk, review of Mortal Love, p. 6.
ONLINE
Abebooks.com, http://www.abebooks.com/ (January 19, 2008), “Getting Gritty with Elizabeth Hand.”
Agony Column Online, http://www.trashotron.com/ (January 19, 2008), Rick Kleffel, review of Bibliomancy.
Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (January 19, 2008), Jeff Vandermeer, “An Interview with Elizabeth Hand,” Melissa Albert, review of Generation Loss.
Boston Review, https://www.bostonreview.net/ (January 10, 2020), John Crowley, “Elizabeth Hand’s Curious Toys.”
Elizabeth Hand Home Page, http://www.elizabethhand.com (January 27, 2017).
Ex Libris, http://exlibrisandrea.blogspot.com/ (April 10, 2011), review of Illyria.
Los Angeles Times Online, http://www.latimes.com/ (January 27, 2017), Steph Cha, review of Hard Light.
Powell’s, https://www.powells.com/ (October 3, 2023), Kelsey Ford, “Powell’s Interview: Elizabeth Hand, Author of ‘A Haunting on a Hill.’”
Science Fiction Weekly Online, http://www.scifi.com/sfw/ (January 19, 2008), Nick Gevers, interview with Hand.
Strange Horizons, http://www.strangehorizons.com/ (January 19, 2008), Cheryl Morgan, interview with Hand; Matthew Cheney, review of Generation Loss.
Elizabeth Hand
USA flag (b.1957)
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.
Awards: Jackson (2016), WFA (2011), Nebula (2007), Mythopoeic (1996) see all
Genres: Mystery, Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Young Adult Fantasy, Literary Fiction
Series
Winterlong
1. Winterlong (1990)
2. Aestival Tide (1992)
3. Icarus Descending (1993)
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Illyria
1. Illyria (2006)
2. Radiant Days (2012)
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Cass Neary
1. Generation Loss (2007)
2. Available Dark (2012)
3. Hard Light (2016)
4. The Book of Lamps and Banners (2020)
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Novels
Waking the Moon (1994)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Glimmering (1997)
Black Light (1999)
Anna and the King (1999)
The Affair of the Necklace (2001)
Catwoman (2004)
Mortal Love (2004)
The Bride of Frankenstein (2007)
Wylding Hall (2015)
Curious Toys (2019)
Hokuloa Road (2022)
A Haunting on the Hill (2023)
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Collections
Last Summer at Mars Hill (1998)
Bibliomancy (2003)
Saffron and Brimstone (2006)
Errantry (2012)
Three Tiptree Award - Winning Novels (2018) (with Eleanor Arnason and Nancy Springer)
The Best of Elizabeth Hand (2021)
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Novellas and Short Stories
Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol (2013)
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Anthology series
Conjunctions (with Bradford Morrow)
67. Other Aliens (2017)
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Series contributed to
Millennium
1. The Frenchman (1997)
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X-Files (misc. novels)
Fight the Future (1998) (with Chris Carter)
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Star Wars : Boba Fett
3. Maze of Deception (2003)
4. Hunted (2003)
A New Threat (2004)
Pursuit (2004)
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Outspoken Authors
18. Fire. (2017)
Elizabeth Hand is the bestselling author of 20 genre-spanning novels and five collections of short fiction and essays. Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards, among other honors, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books.
Elizabeth Hand is the author of twenty genre-spanning novels and five collections of short fiction and essays. Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards, among other honors, and have been chosen as Notable Books by the New York Times and Washington Post. Her critically acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, “one of literature’s great noir anti-heroes” [Katherine Dunn] is being developed as a UK streaming series, and several of her other works have been optioned for film and TV. She is a longtime reviewer for the Washington Post Book World, and has written for numerous publications, including the L.A. Times, Salon, the Boston Review, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Much of her work focuses on artists and performers, particularly those outside the mainstream, as well as on the impacts of climate change. She is on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing, and for over thirty years has led myriad writing workshops, including Clarion West, Clarion, Odyssey, the Yale Writer's Conference, Pike’s Peak Writer's Conference, The Writer’s Hotel, and recently, the debut Salam Writer's Workshop in Lahore, Pakistan and a futurist workshop at Wytham Abbey, Oxford, UK. She divides her time between the Maine coast and North London. You can find her on Twitter @liz_hand and on Facebook @ElizabethHandAuthor.
Tooley Cottage
In 1990, a few weeks before my daughter was born, I bought a ramshackle, tiny (300 square feet) camp on a lake in Maine, with no running water or indoor plumbing. We lived there full-time (her brother came along two years later) for eight years. Improvements were made very slowly, as I could afford them — in early days, I'd go out in the middle of the night in winter with a baseball bat and bang on the side of the cottage to scare away the porcupine that was gnawing at the floorboards. Tooley Cottage is now 400 square feet, with water pumped up from the lake and a composting toilet. It's where I’ve written all my books (save my first novel, Winterlong) and continues to be my writing studio. It’s on a wetland that functions as a sort of wildlife preserve — over the years I’ve seen bobcats, coyotes, foxes, deer, moose, otters, beavers, mink, weasels, fishers, and myriad birds — bald eagles, bitterns, great blue herons, wood ducks, and all kinds of migrating waterfowl. And once, most memorably, a wolf (which I hate to report was killed in Ellsworth a few weeks later). I wish I had Before pictures, to show how far it’s come (a very very VERY long way), but this is what it looks like now. —Liz
Elizabeth Hand on Playwriting, Haunted Houses, and Shirley Jackson
Hand's new novel, 'A Haunting on the Hill,' is the first authorized continuation of Shirley Jackson's iconic work.
November 10, 2023 By Olivia Rutigliano
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
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A Haunting on the Hill is now available from Mulholland Books.
Olivia Rutigliano: I’m so excited because this is the first continuation of The Haunting of Hill House that has been sanctioned by the Shirley Jackson estate. I’m so interested in how you came to this project and how the project developed and what it was like writing with Shirley Jackson as the figure on your shoulder.
Elizabeth Hand: Well, some years back, I was actually in conversation with the Shirley Jackson estate through her agent, Mary Weiss. And at that time, we were talking about doing a follow-on to The Haunting of Hill House. And I think they were talking to myself and to other writers, and for whatever reasons, the project just got back burnered. Everything was perfectly amicable. But during the pandemic, I think in 2020, Mary got back in touch with me. And we kind of revisited the idea and I said, ‘What do you think? You know, do it now.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, let’s talk to Laurence,’ who’s Shirley Jackson’s son and executor. And it was a completely different idea from what I’d had before, which was really not a very formed idea at all.
So, we had several Zoom conversations in which we tossed around different ideas, and then ultimately we came up with what the book is about, which is a small group of actors, theater people who move into Hill House for what they think is going to be an extended time to work on rehearsals for a play and development. And hijinks ensue!
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I am very grateful to the Jackson family for trusting me with this. And Laurence said he loved the book, which was really ultimately all I cared about. I mean, obviously I cared about other things, too. But really, if he did not like the book, I would have said, ‘we can’t do this.’ I heard from a friend of mine who had been in touch with two of the other siblings, that they had read it and were happy with it as well. So I thought, okay, if they’re alright with it, then I’m okay with it.
They were wonderful to work with. There was really no oversight. I think with one minor change that Laurence asked for in the copy editing stage. It was just a wonderful working partnership, you know? And I felt very, you know, very respectful of the fact that they were trusting me with this incredible legacy and opportunity. And so I really, you know, really didn’t want to screw it up!
OR: I became so excited when it seemed that there was going to be not only elements of the classic Jacksonian Gothic, but also a wonderful meta story about a theater troupe and a playwright and the relationship between real life events and capturing them in a fictional way! And I thought this was a really nice foil to some of the programing we’re getting about true crime podcasting, and the way certain creative figures, as in Only Murders in the Building, for example, step into murders or tragedies and experience those events inspiring an original work. I was specifically reminded by the novel Devil House by John Darnielle, which is about a true crime writer who moves into a house where some grisly murders have taken place, and grapples with the ethics of the situation.
EH: He’s the guy from Mountain Goats, right?
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OR: Yeah, he’s so cool.
EH: That’s on my TBR list!
OR: It’s so good! I think these two books would be in conversation with another! I’m very interested in how you respond to this fad, but also take it in a new direction. I mean, I haven’t read anything about theater troupes and plays and playwrights and people from that community weighing in on crime or horror events in their reality. I was wondering what led you to that element?
EH: Well, I’m a failed playwright. I always wanted to write, but I became sort of besotted with the theater when I was, I don’t know, a young adolescent. I grew up in a town where there were a lot of theater people. So I was always sort of aware that in addition to it being this magical thing, that it was also something that people did for a living. And, you know, you would see them in the grocery store or whatever, and then they would go off on Broadway or TV. I started writing plays in high school for a small local children’s theater troupe, and they were produced, and I went to university in a BFA program. I was their first playwriting candidate. And I just totally flamed out for lots of reasons—among them, the fact that I was spending all my time kind of engaging with the punk scene in New York and D.C. instead of going to class. But I also, after three years in this really intensive program, I realized I was never going to be a good playwright, that writing a good play is really hard. That’s why there are many fewer great plays than there are, I think, great novels and short stories. So, I just kind of left that behind. But I’ve always maintained this love for theater and have friends who are performers or actors, and so it’s something I’ve returned to a lot in my fiction. And for this I thought, ‘Oh, I could kind of do this again in sort of a sideways way.’ And I don’t think it’s any spoiler to say that at the outset that Holly is also kind of a stymied playwright. She had this initial success and then things just didn’t go the way that she wanted them to go. I felt like that was a character I could really engage with and write with and identify with.
OR: I’m sensing a little bit of Cass Neary in here, too.
EH: That’s absolutely true. I was actually thinking of that as well—somebody else who didn’t cash in on their early promise. I think Holly is a lot less of a train wreck than Cass. And she’s also coming of age in a different time. You know, the book is set now, it’s post-pandemic. And I think Cass would have a much harder time if she was coming of age or had come of age more recently than the 1970s.
OR: If Cass also showed up at Hill House, it would be a completely different book!
EH: That I’ve actually given thought to over the years! In some of my earlier works, I would have crossover from characters who would sort of recur. And I thought like, ‘Oh, what about Cass having a little cameo in here?’ And then I thought, No, that would just be a bit too much… have her crawling in the windows of Hill House.
OR: An interesting thought experiment!
EH: Right.
OR: Curious Toys is one of my favorite books of all time. But I’m so excited by this new one because it brings you back to a Gothic tone and allows you to play with slightly creepy atmospheric elements. What was it like doing that with the Shirley Jackson template? What was it like engaging with that novel as opposed to creating your own world from, say, a Chicago World’s Fair-style environment?
EH: Yeah, that’s a great question. And thank you! I’m glad that you like Curious Toys. I mean, it’s got the haunted ride in it… that’s sort of a haunted house? I just love haunted houses! I love big spooky houses. They turn up a lot in my fiction. My grandparents had a not at all spooky, but huge old house overlooking the Hudson in New York, and we kind of spent a lot of time there growing up, and it really imprinted on me.
So the idea of having these kinds of vast spaces to wander through, especially when you’re a child, they’re just so mysterious and so full of potential. You don’t know what’s behind this door and you’re always finding another door in the stairway. I think that’s why we get into haunted house novels and films. I think we just have an affinity for them, for, you know, these big places and, you know, to, to a different extent, warehouses or subways or manmade spaces that kind of open up a portal to something else.
I just love haunted house stories. And The Haunting of Hill House is kind of the haunted house story, certainly for Americans. For me, it was just a matter of really following the template that [Jackson] created. Laurence sent me scans of the drawings that she had made, like the house plans for Hill House, some of which I think are reprinted in the Franklin bio. But I had them in like a bigger format. And so that was really cool—to see how she envisioned that space. And I had read the book multiple times over the years, and I reread it more than once when preparing to write this book. And during one of those three readings, I just went through with a highlighter to highlight all the references to doors and windows of the halls and just… spaces within it, because I thought, if I get anything wrong, people are going to call me on it! If I have the red room at the wrong end of the hallway, you know, no one’s going to let me get away with it!
So, I tried really hard to adhere to the design that she had set for her house. So having it all there, it’s kind of like having an existing stage set. And it had in my novel, there is sort of a history to Hill House that takes place 60 years after the events of Shirley Jackson’s novel. So, a lot of time has passed. And I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say there have been other occupants of Hill House during those 60 years. It has history to it, but it still maintains the good bones that Shirley Jackson used—the scaffolding and the structure that she created when she wrote it. For me, it was mostly a matter of going in there with my own characters and letting them loose.
The only character who’s at all a follow-on from her novel is the house itself. I treated that as a character, so I tried to capture the tone—the foreboding and the melodrama that she had, in her novel, attached to the house. I tried to bring that to my version of it. It’s hers, but it’s filtered through my words. To to take a theatrical metaphor, it’s like taking a script, but reinterpreting it with new characters and costumes and time shift.
OR: Do you have a top five ranking of haunted houses and/or buildings in books or movies? I’m just curious if there’s a reading or watching list that might naturally accompany the book.
EH: Wow. That’s a great question. Questions like that, I always like, freeze up at.
OR: Oh no, I’m sorry!
EH: No, no, that’s okay. There’s so many. It might be hard for me to pick a specific story, but certainly… stories by M.R. James, the great antiquarian ghost story writer. He often has houses like that. In Sheridan LeFanu’s story “Green Tea,” I think the character might even be a deacon or a vicar or something, and it’s not necessarily in a haunted house, but in his house, he’s haunted by this spectral monkey. I mean, it’s kind of funny, but it’s also creepy. He was just a master of atmosphere and tone and mood. What else? Dan Chaon’s Ill Will is one of my all-time favorite scary books. I’ve never been able to bring myself to go back and reread that book because it scared me. It’s truly the novel that scared me the most in my adult life. And it’s not you know, it’s not exactly a haunted house, but it is a bad place, a bad space that one of the characters finds himself in. And to me, he just did this incredible job of creating a quintessential bad place. I think, you know, that’s what haunted houses are! I’m looking around at my library to find something.
OR: I’ve just written that book down. I’ve heard of it before but I’ve never read it! And I don’t know if I’m brave enough.
EH: It’s a great novel. I love him. I just finished reading his most recent book and I think he’s a genius. He is just amazing. I love haunted house stories. Oh, you know—and the movie The Haunting, the Robert Wise movie from the early 60s. Great, great movie. Great scary movie.
OR: The big question is: how do you decide what narrative voice to write in? I mean, this is a novel with a very strong first-person narration, which I think grounds it in the Gothic tradition, that Jane Eyre-style. With your book’s narration, you can really feel things happening around Holly. What made you choose to write in that perspective?
EH: That’s always a really hard decision. And sometimes I’ll write an entire story or novel in the wrong voice. I’ll realize it wants to be a first-person and not a third-person. For A Haunting on the Hill, it alternates between the main voice of Holly’s first-person narrative, and other very close third-person points of view (from the other characters like Nisa and Stevie and Amanda).
And I did that because it would have been difficult to actually tell the story and get the full effect of Hill House if there was only one person’s point of view. You know, in the original book it’s mostly Eleanor, but you do get to see the other characters. I don’t think it’s a really close third, but you get to see more of their experience.
And I actually did have, for some of the chapters, a first-person point of view for Nisa, and my editor said, ‘no, I don’t think that works, I think it’s too confusing.’ So, I changed that, I think it was the right decision. But as I was writing it, I was trying with different things. It’s the same thing with crime novels, you know, with the Castle Neary novels. It’s difficult when you’re telling that kind of a story because you only have the perspective of the one person. It works for, you know, sort of amateur sleuth stories like the Cass books, but it can make it difficult because you’re not getting the benefits of other points of view: the police point of view or the murderer’s point of view or, you know, the victim. All of these different things, you’re losing that. So I just kind of wanted to open it up a bit. And so it shifts back and forth. But, yes, Holly is the central character. Her voice came to me pretty early on. And I love working in first-person. I do it a lot. I actually have to make an effort not to use it all the time because I enjoy writing it so much. But there are certain stories that it just doesn’t work for.
OR: That makes sense. Speaking of voices and cultivating atmosphere, this might be a good time for me to selfishly jump toward Curious Toys. And the characters in that novel are wonderful, but my favorite character is Henry. I was so excited when I discovered it. A colleague had emailed me to say, ‘Olivia, I have a book that’s up your alley. It’s about a young child sleuth who dresses up as a boy and roams a fairground and there’s a serial killer.’ And I was like, ‘was this book designed in a lab for me? This has all my interests.’ And then I found out that Henry Darger is in it! And he is one of my favorite random historical figures. I’m so curious how he wound up as a character in this novel.
EH: Thank you. Yeah, that was a really fun book to write. I mean, they’re all hard, but that one… yeah, I loved being able to just get lost in that creepy fairground milieu. But I first heard of Henry Darger probably in the late 70s, early 80s, and was really fascinated by him and then read more about him. About, I don’t know, 20 or so years ago, I reviewed this massive doorstop book about him that was probably the first major study of his work. So he’s somebody who I’ve been fascinated with for a long time.
I had shared some of his artwork and stories, many years ago, with my mother, who found them disturbing but interesting. And at one point, I don’t know… some years back, she said, ‘you should write a story in which Henry is a detective.’ We always call him by his first name. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, Mom, that is a brilliant idea. Henry Darger, as kind of the amateur sleuth.’ But it was a while before I wrote that book, I think I was working on Hard Light, so that’s how long ago it was. Anyway. So, I just had it in the back of my mind. I actually wrote a first draft of it very, very quickly and couldn’t sell it. But Josh Kendall at Mulholland said, ‘this is actually really fascinating. And if you were to revise it, I’d like to take a look at it again.’ So, what happened was, a little while later, a year or so later, I ended up having a book deal with Mulholland for The Book of Lamps and Banners. And Josh said, ‘I would really like to read that Henry Darger book. Why don’t you write that one instead?’ So, I said, ‘okay.’ I wrote it. I had the bare bones from the earlier draft I’d done, which was a much shorter and much more terrible book. But, you know, I had his guidance and the guidance of Emily Gigliano, who was my editor at the time. And they were great in saying, ‘okay, this is what you do with this, don’t lose this, that.’
It was so much fun because I love doing research. If I could basically get paid to do research and never write the book, that would be my dream career. So I just fell down this total rabbit hole researching Riverview Amusement Park and Henry Darger and the early history of silent film and gay women and gay people at that time and Black African American magicians and just all of this stuff that I found out. And then I was really lucky because I just got to throw it all into the book. And it all kind of became part of the mix.
OR: I love how Henry lingered with you and then appeared after a certain amount of time in the book. All right. I just have a quick question for you to wrap up. What’s your favorite book that you’ve worked on?
EH: Oh, gosh, that’s a really hard question!
OR: I’m sorry!
EH: It’s okay! It’s hard because, you know, for the most part, I love them all. I think… one of my early novels I’m not so crazy about. But the rest of them, even if they’re flawed… or sometimes especially if they’re flawed, I still love them. But I think the one that I have the most emotional connection to is Illyria, which is a short novel that actually was originally written as a Christmas chapbook for P.S. Publishing. It was supposed to be very short, and then it ended up becoming a novel, a short novel. It was published by P.S. in the UK and then subsequently by Viking in the U.S. It is centered on a high school production of Twelfth Night, and it draws on a lot of my own personal history. It was basically a story I’ve been trying to write since I was 17 years old and saw a high school production of Twelfth Night that my then-boyfriend was in and a bunch of my other friends. And the production was… life changing. And it was not the first Shakespeare I’d seen! I’d seen a few professional Shakespeare productions at the Stratford Theater in Connecticut. But that one… I was so blown away.
And for years I was trying to write that story. There’s kind of flickers of it throughout quite a few of my early works, including my first novel, Winter Long. But I never got it right. And then I think it was in 2009 or 2010, when I was sitting down and was actually thinking about writing something that drew on The Tempest. And then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is it! I can finally write this book.’ So I did! It was written kind of for (and to some degree about) a very close friend of mine who died not too long after the book came out. But he did get to read it and he loved it. And so, for many, many reasons, it’s really close to my heart.
But I think that’s the one because I just had spent so much time trying to work to write that story and tell that story. And it was like the first story I really wanted to tell, you know, other than juvenilia. It was the first story I started trying to write when I was a teenager and I wasn’t ready to write it. It was years later when I finally was able to and I feel like I nailed it. I don’t always feel like I hit my mark, but with that book, I feel like I did. It won the World Fantasy Award. So other people felt that way as well? It’s a book I really love and I’m very proud of. It kind of makes me sad. Like, I could never go back and reread it, but I loved it. I loved writing and there was a lot of myself in it. That and Generation Loss, I think that would be the flip side of the coin.
OR: I can’t wait to read it. I’m so excited. You know, Twelfth Night is my favorite Shakespeare play. Not just because my name is in it.
EH: Yeah! You can read Illyria in an afternoon. It’s a very short novel!
OR: I’m going to order it at my local bookshop. When you were talking about how you were 17 and you wanted to write this and it sort of lingered within you until the right time, I was thinking, ‘you sat like patience on a monument.’
EH: Yes, exactly. I was like patience on a monument!! Yeah, I’ve seen that play probably 20 times in movies and on the stage. At least. Yeah, I could almost do it by heart.
OR: There should be a Shakespeare festival where crime writers get to perform their favorite plays. This is not a new idea. No one will ever let me put it together. But if I do, you know, I’m calling on you.
EH: I’m in!! I bet I could get other people in on it, too!
Elizabeth Hand
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elizabeth Hand
Elizabeth Hand at Finncon 2007 in Jyväskylä, Finland
Elizabeth Hand at Finncon 2007 in Jyväskylä, Finland
Born March 29, 1957 (age 67)
Yonkers, New York, U.S.
Occupation Novelist
Alma mater Catholic University of America
Genre Science fiction, Fantasy
Website
elizabethhand.com
Elizabeth Hand (born March 29, 1957) is an American writer.
Life and career
Hand grew up in Yonkers and Pound Ridge, New York. She studied drama and anthropology at the Catholic University of America. Since 1988, Hand has lived in coastal Maine, the setting for many of her stories, and as of 2000 lives in Lincolnville.[1] She also lives part-time in Camden Town, London which has been the setting for Mortal Love and the short story "Cleopatra Brimstone".
Hand's first story, "Prince of Flowers", was published in 1988 in Twilight Zone magazine, and her first novel, Winterlong, was published in 1990. With Paul Witcover, she created and wrote DC Comics' 1990s cult series Anima.[2] Hand's other works include Aestival Tide (1992); Icarus Descending (1993); Waking the Moon (1994), which won the Tiptree Award and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award; the post-apocalyptic novel Glimmering (1997); contemporary fantasy Black Light (1999), a New York Times Notable Book; the historical fantasy Mortal Love (2004), a Washington Post Notable Book; the psychological thriller Generation Loss (2007), and the World Fantasy Award-winning "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon". Her story collections are Last Summer at Mars Hill (1998) (which includes the Nebula and World Fantasy award-winning title novella); Bibliomancy (2002), winner of the World Fantasy Award;[3] and Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories, which includes the Nebula Award-winning "Echo" (2006). Mortal Love was also shortlisted for the 2005 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.
Among Hand's other recent short fiction, "Pavane for a Prince of the Air" (2002) and "Cleopatra Brimstone" (2001) won International Horror Guild Awards.[4] Most recently, she won the Shirley Jackson Award for Generation Loss and the World Fantasy Award in 2008 for Illyria,[3] and the Inkpot Award in 2018.[5]
She also writes movie and television spin-offs, including Star Wars tie-in novels and novelizations of such films as The X-Files and 12 Monkeys. She contributed a Bride of Frankenstein novel to the recent series of classic movie monster novels published by Dark Horse Comics.
One of Hand's themes from the Winterlong saga is the remorseless exploitation of animal and plant species to create what she calls "geneslaves." Examples include a three-hundred-year-old genetically reconstructed and cerebrally augmented Basilosaurus by the name of Zalophus; the aardmen, hybrids of dog and man; hydrapithecenes, human-fish or human-cuttlefish hybrids somewhat resembling Davy Jones and his crew from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series; and sagittals, whelks genetically engineered to be worn as a bracelet and, when its host feels threatened or agitated, extrude a spine laced with a deadly neurotoxin.
Hand is a longtime reviewer and critic for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, Salon, and Village Voice, among others. She also writes a regular review column for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (August 2020)
Novels
1988 Winterlong – ISBN 0-553-28772-9
1992 Aestival Tide – ISBN 0-553-29542-X
1993 Icarus Descending – ISBN 0-553-56288-6
1994 Waking the Moon (longer UK edition) – ISBN 0-586-21747-9
1995 Waking the Moon (US edition preferred by the author [1]) – ISBN 0-06-105214-0
1997 Glimmering (second edition 2012) – ISBN 0-06-100805-2
1999 Black Light – ISBN 0-06-105266-3
2000 "Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol" in Sci Fiction
2002 "Cleopatra Brimstone" in Redshift
2003 "The Least Trumps" in Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists
2004 Mortal Love[6] – ISBN 0-06-105170-5
2006 Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol (illustrated by Judith Clute; originally published December 2000) – ISBN 1-870824-49-0. The story is a tribute to entertainers Sandy Becker and Joey Ramone. An online edition of Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol was serialized by Hand on her Livejournal community "theinferior4".
2006 Illyria – ISBN 1-905834-63-2, ISBN 978-1-905834-63-1
2007 The Bride of Frankenstein (media tie-in) – ISBN 1-59582-035-3
2012 Radiant Days
2015 Wylding Hall (novella)
2019 Curious Toys
2020 The Book of Lamps and Banners
2022 Hokuloa Road
2023 A Haunting on the Hill (a sequel to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House)
Cass Neary Crime Novels
2007 Generation Loss – ISBN 1-931520-21-6
2012 Available Dark – ISBN 978-0312585945
2016 Hard Light – ISBN 978-1250030382
2020 The Book of Lamps and Banners – ISBN 978-0316485937
Star Wars Expanded Universe
2003 Boba Fett: Maze Of Deception – ISBN 0-439-44245-1
2003 Boba Fett: Hunted – ISBN 0-439-33930-8
2004 Boba Fett: A New Threat – ISBN 0-439-33931-6
2004 Boba Fett: Pursuit – ISBN 0-439-33933-2
Adaptations
1995 12 Monkeys – ISBN 0-06-105658-8
1997 Millennium: The Frenchman – ISBN 0-06-105800-9
1998 The X-Files: Fight the Future – ISBN 0-06-105932-3
1999 Anna and the King – ISBN 0-06-102045-1
2001 The Affair of the Necklace – ISBN 0-06-107616-3
2004 Catwoman – ISBN 0-345-47652-2
Short fiction
Collections
1998 Last Summer at Mars Hill – ISBN 0-06-105348-1
2003 Bibliomancy – ISBN 1-902880-73-0
2006 Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories – ISBN 1-59582-096-5
2012 Errantry – ISBN 1618730304
Stories
1990 "Jangletown" (with Paul Witcover; in The Further Adventures of The Joker)
1993 "Lucifer Over Lancaster" (with Paul Witcover; in The Further Adventures of Superman)
1994 "The Erl-King"
Book reviews
Year Review article Work(s) reviewed
2000 Hand, Elizabeth (May 2000). "Books". F&SF. 98 (5): 29–34.
Bailey, Dale (1999). American nightmares : the haunted house formula in American popular fiction. Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
2011 Hand, Elizabeth (July–August 2011). "Books". F&SF. 121 (1&2): 42–48.
Pacitti, Tony (2010). My best friend is a Wookie. Adams Media.
Yu, Charles (2010). How to live in a science fictional universe. Pantheon.
Kimmel, Daniel M. (2011). Jar Jar Binks must die ... and other observations about science fiction movies. Fantastic Books.
Q&As
Powell's Interview: Elizabeth Hand, Author of 'A Haunting on a Hill'
by Kelsey Ford, October 3, 2023 9:39 AM
Graphic of author Elizabeth Hand leaning against a wall, alongside the cover for her new book, 'A Haunting on the Hill'
The release of Elizabeth Hand’s newest novel, A Haunting on the Hill, marks the first official sequel to Shirley Jackson’s iconic The Haunting of Hill House, officially authorized by the Shirley Jackson estate. A Haunting on the Hill returns us to that malignant house, alongside a group of writers, actors, and singers who think it will be the perfect place to finesse their production of a very witchy play. They probably should’ve paid attention to the warnings about the house, but if they had, we wouldn’t have this deliciously unnerving book — a perfect read as we head into October.
Hand was kind enough to answer our burning questions about hauntings, artistic cannibalism, inspiration, process, atmosphere, and so much more.
÷ ÷ ÷
With sincere apologies, I feel like I need to get this question out of the way first, since the project of writing the first official sequel for a book as iconic as The Haunting of Hill House feels like it would be so daunting. How did you approach writing this book? I’m curious how closely you kept The Haunting of Hill House in mind while you wrote, or if you tried to create a certain distance between your project and Shirley Jackson’s.
It was a bit daunting, but to be honest, my actual writing process wasn’t much different from that with any other novel. I’d discussed my premise and characters with the Jackson Estate, and they read the chapters I’d written before we submitted them to my editor. I told them I wouldn’t be writing a pastiche or using any characters (other than Hill House itself) from Jackson’s masterpiece, but that I’d honor her work and engage with it in my own novel. As I’ve said elsewhere, I wrote an Elizabeth Hand novel set in Hill House. If I’d attempted to write anything else, I’d be asking to fail. So yes, I kept a certain distance between my own work and Jackson’s, though obviously A Haunting on the Hill is in a continuous dialogue with her novel. I wanted this to be a book that readers familiar with Hill House would enjoy, but also a standalone for those who hadn’t read Jackson’s book. Ideally, the latter would immediately do so!
Did your process for this book differ at all from your process on your other books? What does that process look like?
My process is basically sitting and writing 1,000 words a day, every day. Obviously I don’t always hit that mark, but after thirty-five years and twenty novels and myriad short stories and hundreds of book reviews, I usually come pretty close, and I don’t beat myself up if I miss it. So much of writing takes place inside one’s head — what my partner calls dreamwork. The actual putting it on the screen or page is only one step in the process (editing, revision, copyediting, agonizing are other steps in the process).
On a craft level, the language in A Haunting on the Hill is so melodious and beautifully haunting. I’m curious how intentional you were about tying the phonics of your language to the themes of the book?
Thank you! I love ghost stories and especially haunted house stories, and I’ve written a number of variations on these over the years. I’ve wanted to write ghost stories since I was about six years old, so I’ve read a huge number of them, and reread many of them over the lifetime, especially antiquarian ghost stories and visionary ghost stories — Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Arthur Machen, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and especially Robert Aickman. I think that Aickman’s oblique approach to the supernatural especially seems somewhat like Jackson’s, the way they both start with the mundane and gradually rip away our expectations of what that word actually means — in their works, and sometimes in our own world, the mundane doesn’t really exist.
In their works, and sometimes in our own world, the mundane doesn’t really exist.
Atmosphere is critical in crafting a believable shared world with the reader — there has to be enough common ground that the reader initially feels safe in the fictional world, before that veil of safety is torn away. The only way to do this on the page is with language, so precision in word choices and rhythm is really essential. If I’m reading a story, my own or someone else’s, and I come across an awkward word or phrase, it totally disrupts the “continuous dream of fiction” (as John Gardner famously put it). In a mimetic work, I think it’s easier to continue reading, but with a supernatural story, you’ve broken the spell — you’ve given the reader an instant to reflect and think, Oh, wait, THIS could never happen. And you lose them. It’s like coming across an anachronism in a historical novel or movie, like the extras in Spartacus who can clearly be seen wearing wristwatches.
Something I really connected to in A Haunting on the Hill was the idea of creative expression, the need to be creative, and the often-cannibalistic form that creativity can take. I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on this theme, and why you decided to lean so heavily in this direction on this particular project.
The origins and expressions of artistic creation are a recurring theme in my work. I felt like I needed a path into Hill House that would be my own, so having a bunch of artists stay there seemed like a natural way of doing that. Over the last few years, I’ve been fascinated by the whole notion of artistic appropriation, which is obviously something that’s baked into the creative process — none of us is inventing the wheel with our songs or stories or paintings. I think when possible it’s good to honor and acknowledge that — maybe not in a story or song itself (“I am singing this song/Which obviously owes a huge debt to Bob Dylan”) but in an Author’s Note or the like. I’ve written three novels that have historical figures in them, or characters obviously (to me) based on historical figures, and I always try to include info in the back of the book sharing my sources.
Over the last few years, I’ve been fascinated by the whole notion of artistic appropriation, which is obviously something that’s baked into the creative process.
With A Haunting on the Hill, Nisa is inspired by folk songs, in particular Child Ballads, but she’s also filtering it through her own personal background. Holly has used someone else’s experience as the basis for her first play, and now is drawing on a historical source for “Witching Night.” I liked playing with the notion that this makes her a somewhat unreliable person — all artists are thieves to some extent — and how it impacts her relationships to the others she’s working with at Hill House, especially with Nisa.
Speaking of characters: all of the characters in A Haunting on the Hill are so complicated and thorny (in the best of ways). How do you go about writing fully fleshed-out characters that aren’t necessarily likable, while balancing their characteristics with the needs of the story?
I love reading about complicated characters, and creating them as well. I think my starting point is that these characters (along with others I’ve written about) are likable, at least to themselves. No one sets out to be a villain or a fascist or an old-fashioned jerk: in their own minds, they’re the hero/ine, they’re the beleaguered one, they’re the victim. For this particular novel, it was especially important that each of the four central characters had their own ambitions and belief in their own talent (whether or not those are correct). They also needed to be increasingly suspicious and to some degree envious of the others as the story proceeds — that’s how the house preys on them.
No one sets out to be a villain or a fascist or an old-fashioned jerk: in their own minds, they’re the hero/ine, they’re the beleaguered one, they’re the victim.
I think theater people might be particularly vulnerable in a situation like this — like other artists, they’re accustomed to having their work devalued in a world that’s often looking to exploit them, or ignore them. I’m also fairly adept at using my own flaws and weaknesses and experiences and grafting them onto my characters.
But truthfully, unlike in real life, often it’s just fun to be around fictional messed-up people. They’re very entertaining.
The meta-narrative of the play that Holly Sherwin is working on is so delightfully unnerving. How did you go about weaving this story-within-a-story through, and were there elements of the book that you unlocked by doing so? Did you look at any references while building out the play’s story?
I had a copy of “The Witch of Edmonton” and went through it multiple times, highlighting lines and scenes I could use. A lot of the material was pretty desultory (that’s why it’s not a well-known Jacobean play), but the scenes with Tomasin, the demonic black dog, were quite entertaining. I grafted some of that dialogue into Holly’s play, then added some Child ballads and other folk songs. I changed the lyrics for some of those, and altered some of the play dialogue as well. I chose songs and scenes that could easily serve the needs of Hill House once it got involved. Once I did that, it was relatively easy to shuttle back and forth between the rehearsals and the action of the story.
I loved the note in your acknowledgements, thanking your daughter for the conversations about who you should kill. Without giving anything away — how did those conversations go? Did you discover anything about the story while you were talking it through?
Callie had read an early, incomplete draft, and I told her what I had in store for the characters. She very adamantly told me I could not go through with some of my plans. I was on the fence, so I was running my ideas by her. I decided she was right — I was easily convinced! It was a pretty brief conversation, and once I made up my mind, I didn’t need to think about it any more, not that aspect of the story, anyway.
What authors have inspired you the most over the years?
Jackson, obviously. John Crowley, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Gene Wolfe, Evangeline Walton, Laurie Colwin, James Salter, John Fowles, Daphne Du Maurier. Those writers are part of my creative DNA — they helped shape me. More recently, I love Cara Hoffman, Victor LaValle, Robert Levy, Mariana Enriquez. But really, there are too many to mention. Whenever I answer a question like this, I always think of a half dozen more writers I forgot to name.
Beyond other authors and books, where do you find your inspiration?
Music, the visual arts, film — basically any other form of creative enterprise. I’ve lived in rural Maine for thirty-five years, and the landscape here never ceases to amaze me. I can say the same for London, where I’ve lived for a few months out of the year since the mid-1990s. Whenever I’m in London or some other city, I hit as many museums and plays as I can. I love ancient archaeological and ritual sites, so I always make it a point to visit those if I’m in a new place.
Many of your books exist in this uncanny, haunting, unnerving horror space. What draws you to this genre? Do you find writing these stories cathartic? Do they ever get under your skin and really unnerve you as you work on them?
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved ghost stories, monster movies, anything that unsettled me — but at a safe remove. My earliest stories as a child were either ghost stories or animal stories. As I got older, I just wrote more grownup versions of those. I’m not sure I’d call them cathartic, though I’ve exorcised a few demons over the years. But yes, sometimes they do get under my skin. This novel did — having Hill House inside my head for all that time really was an unsettling experience. It was exciting to write it but also it felt like living in a very dark space for all that time. So I’ll be ready to do something new.
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Elizabeth Hand is the author of Hokuloa Road, named a Notable Book of 2022 by the New York Times, and more than nineteen cross-genre novels and collections of short fiction. Her work has received the Shirley Jackson Award (three times), the World Fantasy Award (four times), the Nebula Award (twice), as well as the James M. Tiptree Jr. and Mythopoeic Society Awards, and she's written for publications including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Boston Review, and more. She divides her time between Maine and London.
Arts in Society
Elizabeth Hand’s Curious Toys
Celebrated novelists John Crowley and Elizabeth Hand discuss Hand’s new novel and the ways that historical fiction can and cannot answer our questions about the past.
John Crowley
Elizabeth Hand
Interview, Literature, Visual Art
January 10, 2020
The people Elizabeth Hand creates are often on the run: from dark forces only they can perceive, from actual enemies who want to erase them, from families and social and sexual structures that they experience as harm. Her Cass Neary Crime Novels feature punk photographer Cass Neary, recorder of the New York punk scene of the 1970s, who in the books is hunted, threatened, and harmed by people with reasons to do so, including herself. Hand’s novel Mortal Love (2004) features the British “outsider artist” Richard Dadd (1817–1886), who lived for years in asylums after killing his father (whom he believed was a threatening demon). Dadd’s obsessive paintings are filled with dozens of tiny figures—fairies, little people, insect-like beings—who (in Hand’s novel) lead contemporaries such as Algernon Swinburne into dangerous realms of possibility and terror.
‘There are hidden creative spirits like Darger walking the streets right now, and we’ll never know because we don’t want to. Historical fiction can be a kind of cheat in that respect: it let’s us think, “I would have recognized this person’s greatness.”’
Dadd’s obsessions and his episodes of madness connect him to another figure of Hand’s personal masque: Henry Darger (1892–1973), whom she has written about with great sympathy and insight. For most of his adult life, Darger worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago. His magnum opus, the 15,000-page illustrated novel In the Realms of the Unreal, was discovered in his rented room only after his death. Darger’s art, like Dadd’s, is filled with hundreds of tiny characters, all alike and yet distinct; they are engaged in terrifying events, massacres, battles, dismemberments, and yet the pictures magically remain innocent, even charming. Darger, who spent his childhood and young adult life in institutions, wrote in an autobiographical piece that “I hated to see the day come when I will be grown up. I never wanted to. I wished to be young always.” His imagination was crowded with images of death and destruction visited on children, especially young girls, and yet his heroines are brave, strong, and fight for one another. The huge pictures he made of battles and monsters were mostly created by collage—advertisements, catalogues, and photographs, usually traced and painted. He died without ever seeing his work accepted or even seen—and it may be he wanted it that way. His fame is secure now: major museums have exhibited his largescale works, which he made on wrapping paper; John Ashbery even wrote a long poem that essentially retells Darger’s In the Realms of the Unreal.
Now, in Hand’s large and thickly-populated new novel Curious Toys, Darger appears in a different form: not as a reference or a presiding spirit but a character in his own right, and in his own time: a very odd young man, but valiant and even a hero, in his way. The novel is—appropriately—about the murder of young girls, and the last-minute escape of some.
Escape, in many senses, is what the book is concerned with. The central character of the novel is also a young girl, whose sister was murdered before the book opens, the murderer never caught. Pin, as the girl has named herself, dresses as a boy. Her mother, terrified of losing her too, insists on the disguise, which Pin at fourteen is very happy with. She can go anywhere boys go, unrestrained by clothing or mores, in the roiling world that Hand has created for her: a huge Chicago amusement park, Riverview, in the year 1915. Pin’s mother, Gina, from the Sicilian slum near the park, now works at Riverview as a fortune-teller. Pin hangs around the new Essanay movie studio, catching a glimpse of Charlie Chaplin and developing a crush on a nascent star called Glory; she carries reefer for the “She-Male” exhibitor and collects the money; and she hangs out at the Hell Gate ride. The amusement would, at other parks, be called the Tunnel of Love, but it has the right name here: it’s where Pin catches sight of a man taking a female child into a boat, and coming out alone.
As a mystery novel, Curious Toys belongs with those where we are intimate from the beginning with the murderer, and yet are kept from knowing which among the large cast he is. We know his obsessions, his tricks for attracting his prey; we are inside his mind. But I doubt many readers will guess his name before the last pages. Within the bustle and color and people, real and imagined, is a classic mystery, carefully plotted and executed. Darger, Pin’s outsider friend, is of course a suspect—his imagination is filled with images of murdered girls, he is given to strange outbursts of rage and passion—but the killer we observe, whose thoughts we know, seems from the beginning a quite different character.
As I read the book, I wondered about the authenticity of the Chicago amusement park, whether each of the stops on Pin’s rounds had some sort of basis in fact, or were more like the stations of a fantasy novel, the author’s allegory. Not long ago, I had a conversation with Hand about the book, and learned to my surprise. . . well, this:
‘While I always try to create as authentic and absorbing a portrait of a period as I can, I love playing with all the what ifs of history.’
John Crowley: What drew you to set your story in early twentieth-century Chicago, specifically in a huge amusement park of a new kind (mechanical and scientific displays) and a movie studio making films that showed changing mores—in other words, a world of relatively new female freedoms, and working-class young people enjoying new forms of cheap entertainment? Did the story come first, or the environment where it was set?
Elizabeth Hand: I had long wanted to write a book about Henry Darger, though it was my mother’s idea to make him a detective. The more I researched Darger’s Chicago, the more I realized it was a place where barriers were falling—sexual, racial, economic—and that early movies and amusement parks were among the battering rams bringing down those walls. Riverview billed itself as a family place, but its woods and the Fairyland picnic ground accommodated romantic assignations along with families and social clubs.
JC: Readers may not be aware (as I was not) of how deeply you’ve intertwined Darger, Chicago custodial institutions such as St. Joseph’s—a real place—and urban poverty. In your mind, how does Darger fit into the landscape of Chicago that you present?
EH: I knew virtually nothing about the period during which Darger lived as a young man—the so-called Progressive Era, leading up to the United States entering World War I. I was much more knowledgeable about Britain’s cultural history of that time; for whatever reason, U.S. history didn’t interest me. Chicago was also terra incognita—I have family there and have visited over the years, but I’m a New Yorker who’s lived in northern New England for more than half my life. So when I began researching what became Curious Toys (which took almost ten years), I entered what was, for me, mostly virgin territory.
JC: So Riverview was a real place that just seems invented.
EH: Oh yes, it was real! I have a lifelong love of amusement parks, carnivals, circuses, fairs, and the like. So once I learned that Darger frequented Riverview Amusement Park, and that Essanay Studios was booming not far uptown, everything fell into place. Amusement parks and cinema became mass entertainments at about the same time in the early twentieth century. Both were cheap, and also accessible to the country’s burgeoning immigrant population. You didn’t need to read the title cards of silent films to understand what was happening on screen, any more than you needed to speak fluent English to ride the Witching Waves or Jackrabbit Coaster.
JC: Does the mode of historical fiction offer unique resources to illustrate and discuss the lives of figures such as Darger, who are never accepted or understood in their own time?
‘I can’t be an observer—I wasn’t there. And I’ll leave commentary to historians. I was drawn to the mystery at the heart of Darger’s work, and I knew going in that this was not a mystery that I could solve.’
EH: I don’t know if someone like Darger would be accepted or understood today—he’d probably be seen as a crazy man, practically homeless, mentally ill. People would cross the street to avoid contact with him. Darger never escaped extreme poverty, or the memory of the sexual and physical trauma he almost certainly experienced in the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children where he was institutionalized as a child. Even if he didn’t experience sexual abuse himself (which seems unlikely), I’m sure he witnessed it. That’s what he drew on for his more disturbing images of children being tortured or mutilated. He relived that childhood trauma over and over through the adventures of his novel’s protagonists, the Vivian Girls, who are endlessly fighting their adult male oppressors, constantly being captured and tortured by them, then miraculously escaping to live and fight another day.
There are probably untold hidden creative spirits like Darger walking the streets right now, and we’ll never know their work or history because we don’t want to. I think historical fiction can be a kind of cheat in that respect: it puts writer and reader in collusion, so we both think, “Oh, I would have recognized this person’s greatness or talent or secret sorrow.” But without the compassion (and curiosity) of people like William Schloeder, Darger’s only friend, or Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner, his landlords who found his work and didn’t just throw it away, we’ll never see the Henry Dargers who live among us.
JC: Historical fictions are designed largely as a sort of medley: true details of time and place, actual persons of the period treated as fictional characters with their own point of view, invented persons who interact with the historical ones, real events that will form memories for the real people and for the fictional ones. You’ve long been drawn to this kind of fiction and its possibilities. What do you think its power is, for writer and reader?
EH: Well, as you know yourself, history is an immense sandbox for a writer to play in. I would add “fulfilling,” but can a sandbox be fulfilling? I love research, searching for and delving into primary sources in hopes of discovering some nugget of information that’s somehow gone unnoticed, that I can then use in a story. And while I always try to create as authentic and absorbing a portrait of a period as I can, I love playing with all the what ifs of history. Darger and Chaplin and Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht and others were all in Chicago at the same time: what if their paths crossed in some way?
JC: A theme of Curious Toys is how people in that period were fascinated with human oddities (fake or real), and you explore how, as much as that was about fear and wonder over the bodies of differently-abled people, it was also connected with the period’s gender rules and expectations. How much of this background psychology do you expect readers will sense?
EH: I never know what readers will “get” or not. To me, some things in a narrative seem perfectly obvious, yet are completely overlooked by readers (and critics). But I hope that my depiction of that period and its fears and bigotries is realistic enough that readers grasp how similar it was to our own time, even though many things have changed for the better. I came across an anti-immigrant government screed from around 1915 that could have been written yesterday by a member of the current administration. Gender expectations have changed since 1915; I suspect Pin would have very similar experiences were she to pull the same gender reversals today, though they’d be updated for the twenty-first-century workplace. I guess my real concern should be that some readers will think my historical depiction of an earlier era’s prejudices is fake news.
JC: Those fears and desires seem potentially in tension with the speculative genre of historical fiction.
EH: I don’t see historical fiction as necessarily being speculative, though there’s certainly speculative fiction—science fiction, fantasy, supernatural—that has a historical setting. As mentioned, I’ve written several novels or novellas of that type (as have you, John). But with Curious Toys, I was much more interested in creating as much of a truly “authentic” depiction of 1915 Chicago as I could, insofar as “authentic fiction” is an oxymoron. There really aren’t any speculative elements in it, though I obviously invented the last scene between Pin and Henry, in which her (fictional) role in the creation of the Vivian Girls is revealed. As for the roles of outcasts in fiction, it’s hard to imagine any novel or story that doesn’t feature an outcast of some sort, from the Book of Genesis to Moby-Dick to Margaret Atwood’s The Testament.
JC: “Outlandish” then is in the eye of the beholder?
EH: People perceived as Other by those in the mainstream don’t think of themselves that way until someone else defines them as such. The original meaning of “outlandish” is foreign or non-native, and in the context of Curious Toys, that would mean people like Pin’s immigrant mother, Gina, as well as other immigrants, African Americans, those who are differently abled or neuroatypical, queer, poor, female—basically anyone who wasn’t a white man. Today, of course, the behavior of certain white men is what’s regarded as outlandish.
JC: How does the portrayal of the outlandish and the outcast fit into a work that strives to be both authentic and speculative? Does the author let us see how the past really was, or estrange us enough with the fiction that we can unlock the present meanings of past?
EH: It’s impossible for me to see how the past really was. Even my own past is lost to me—another country, as William Faulkner put it. And I truly wasn’t interested in creating a sense of estrangement, but the opposite. My background is in cultural anthropology, where one usually starts by determining what we have in common with a social or ethnic or religious group, rather than what makes us different. I hoped readers might see how similar Pin’s world is to ours, with all its bigotries and mysteries and delights and perils. I can’t be an observer—I wasn’t there. And I’ll leave commentary to historians. I was drawn to the mystery at the heart of Darger’s work, and I knew going in that this was not a mystery that I (or anyone else) could solve. I just wanted more people to know about this brilliant, peculiar, lonely man and the world he inhabited. Darger lived to tell stories, and I thought he deserved one of his own.
John Crowley
John Crowley is the author of Little, Big and the Ægypt cycle. His most recent novel is Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr. He teaches at Yale University.
Elizabeth Hand
Elizabeth Hand’s most recent book is Curious Toys.
Fire, by Elizabeth Hand, PM Press, 2017, $13, pb
This is only the third book published by PM Press that I've read, the previous ones also being a mix of fiction and non-fiction. One was by Cory Doctorow, the other by Ursula K. Le Guin, both riveting. As is Fire.
In the case of each of these titles, I've only happened upon them, somehow remaining oblivious to the rest of the publisher's large backlist and ongoing publishing plans. Given the other titles listed in the publisher's catalog at the end of this Elizabeth Hand collection, and the quality of the three titles I've read, that's something I need to remedy. Because they're excellent books, of course, but also because of the publisher's mission statement, which appeals to the old hippie/anarchist in me:
"We seek to create radical and stimulating fiction and nonfiction books, pamphlets, T-shirts, visual and audio materials to entertain, educate, and inspire you. We aim to distribute these through every available channel with every available technology, whether that means you are seeing anarchist classics at our bookfair stalls; reading our latest vegan cookbook at the café; downloading geeky fiction ebooks; or digging new music and timely videos from our website."
Now, while I appreciate a publisher having an ideological slant, just as I appreciate a writer with something to say, that alone isn't a reason to support them. The best intentions can sometimes result in a heavy-handed discourse. Excellent art can be undermined by a shoddy or unprofessional presentation and/or design. There needs to be substance.
Happily, all three of the titles I've read thus far from PM Press provide exactly that. Substance and edge. And they look great. Smartly designed and easy to read in both paper and electronic editions. And a quick glance at the back catalog I mentioned earlier shows that they work with some of the best and most provocative writers in our field. Writers such as Rudy Rucker, Terry Bisson, John Shirley, foe R. Lansdale, Karen Joy Fowler, Norman Spinrad, and Nalo Hopkinson, to name a few. And that's not even taking into account the non-genre writers, as well as the broad choice of writers from other fields, so they're certainly doing something right.
It reminds me a little of the latter part of the last century, when publishers had a strong sense of identity and readers would collect work from particular houses--DAW, Ace, Bantam Spectra, Del Rey--because they knew these imprints would deliver the kinds of stories they liked best.
That's the sense I get with PM Press except, instead of a certain style of book--such as how Del Rey was known for great epic fantasy, DAW delivered top notch heroic fantasy and space opera series, etc.--PM Press appears to be creating a community with the singular aim of making the world a better place.
One of the best ways to do that is to understand where the world stands, where it comes from, and where it might be going, and Elizabeth Hand hits every one of those points with Fire.
The fiction (or at least two of the stories) looks ahead to natural disasters, focusing on the small and personal, which makes the greater problems beyond the confines of the characters' lives all that more chilling. The third story, "Kronia," takes us into the confused mind of a time traveler--or perhaps, if we don't take what we're told at face value, the narrator is on the spectrum.
For the nonfiction, Hand profiles Alice Sheldon (fames Tiptree, Jr.) and Thomas Disch. A good writer, when writing about the arts, makes you want to experience the work of their subjects, and Hand is very good at what she does, because the whole time I was reading, I wanted to go down to my library and reread books by her subjects while taking in her observations on them.
The lives of both these authors were filled with an unfair amount of tragedy, which makes their artistic accomplishments even more astonishing and poignant.
Rounding out the book is an interview with Hand by Terry Bisson, a bibliography, and a very heartfelt and revealing autobiographical essay in which Hand shows us the events in her life that led her to become the author she is today.
I loved everything about this book, just as I did with the Doctorow and Le Guin titles, and can't wait to explore some more of the PM Press catalog in the months to come. You can have a look for yourself at their website where you'll find not only some great sf but lots of fascinating titles covering everything from music, politics, and Latin America to gender studies and books on the African American and Native American experience.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Spilogale, Inc.
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/
Source Citation
Source Citation
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de Lint, Charles. "Fire." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, vol. 132, no. 5-6, May-June 2017, pp. 82+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A491230377/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6157ca07. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
Curious Toys. By Elizabeth Hand. Oct. 2019. 384p. Little, Brown/Mulholland, $27 (97803164858831.
Its 1915, and a serial killer is preying on young girls in Chicago, flying under the radar as the Black Hand gang dominates headlines and police attention. After Vivians younger sister disappears, the 14-year-old Vivian and her mother move near Chicago's Riverview amusement park, where her mother becomes a fortune-teller. Vivian, reinvented for her own safety as a boy named Pin, earns money by delivering reefer for Max, the park's popular he/she attraction. Heading back from a drop one afternoon, Pin spots a man entering the boat ride with a young girl she recognizes, and later exiting alone. Curious, Pin searches the ride's horror-themed features and finds the girl's body. While the police rush to build a case against Clyde, the ride's African American feature act, Pin traces the killer back to Riverview and realizes she's hunting the man who took her sister. Hand expertly plays the excitement of Chicago's burgeoning entertainment industry against the killer's unsettling obsession with dolls, twisting the story even darker by pairing Pin with Henry Darger, a freshly released psychiatric patient who claims he's on a mission to save Chicago's girls. A well-crafted and deliciously unsettling period thriller that will find fans among those who enjoy Caleb Carr's mix of early modern technology and investigative action.--Christine Tran
YA: YAs who enjoy historical fiction will be gripped by this exciting tale of a teens search for a serial killer in 1915 Chicago. CT.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Tran, Christine. "Curious Toys." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 1, 1 Sept. 2019, p. 50. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A601763579/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2c6b97bd. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
Hand, Elizabeth CURIOUS TOYS Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (Adult Fiction) $27.00 10, 15 ISBN: 978-0-316-48588-3
Chicago, 1915: In the midst of a steamy summer, a rash of child murders terrifies the city in Hand's (Hard Light, 2016, etc.) latest.
After her younger sister went missing, 14-year-old Pin's mother, the carnival fortuneteller, told her to dress like a boy, so now she runs free through the park, delivering drugs, sneaking into rides, and hoping for a chance to see Glory, a local movie actress. But most of all she enjoys the chance to observe the chaotic scene of the carnival. One day, she notices a man and a young girl in line for the Hell Gate, a notorious "love boat" ride--only the man emerges alone from the other side of the tunnel. Girls go missing all the time in Chicago, but Pin's suspicions are piqued, and when she discovers the girl's naked body floating in the waters of the ride, all hell breaks loose. As the carnival policeman, Francis Bacon, conducts an investigation along with the local cops, Pin encounters help of her own in the form of Henry Darger, clearly a fictionalized version of the real reclusive artist. Here, he is a strange and troubled man who lives at the hospital and calls himself a "general of the Gemini," purporting to protect and rescue girls in trouble. To call the novel and its characters "colorful" is a terrific understatement. A carnival setting immediately allows for a higher threshold of the bizarre, but Hand skillfully develops each character beyond mere oddity or empty sensation. Even Charlie Chaplin gets a cameo, though it's far from flattering. Dr. H.H. Holmes is a ghostly presence within the novel, invoked by several characters; this comparison to another Chicago murderer serves to deepen context. While Henry and his occasional moments of narration take a little getting used to, the wordplay and imagination that qualify his chapters become more and more appealing. Most of all, Pin is an engaging, courageous heroine, and her musings on gender identity are both poignant and relevant.
Richly imaginative and psychologically complex.
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"Hand, Elizabeth: CURIOUS TOYS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A596269875/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=64355f43. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
Curious Toys
Elizabeth Hand. Mulholland, $27 (384p) ISBN 978-0-3164-8588-3
Spunky 14-year-old Pin, the heroine of this atmospheric crime novel from Shirley Jackson Award-winner Hand (Hard Light) set in early 20th-century Chicago, struggles to survive with her single mother, the fortune-teller at the Riverview Amusement Park, whose patrons try to temporarily forget such grim realities as grime-belching industrial furnaces, squalid tenements, and murderous gangs. The scrawny Pin disguises herself as a boy both for safety and to give her the freedom to earn money running errands. Her favorite is delivering drugs from Max, the park's "She-Male," to customers at the Essanay movie studio, a world that fascinates her. But darker forces intrude when the teen, who finds passing as a boy liberating, discovers a murdered girl inside the Hell Gate ride. Her efforts to track down the killer, with the help of "dingbatty" reallife outsider artist Henry Darger, put her in peril. Though Hand's attempts to establish multiple viable suspects, all with disturbing, if confusing, psychological histories, muddy the narrative, this remains a phantasmagoric time trip tailor-made for fans of The Devil in the White City. Agent: Martha Millard, Martha Millard Literary. (Oct.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
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"Curious Toys." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 26, 1 July 2019, p. 43. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A592983462/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3571cad6. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
Hand, Elizabeth THE BOOK OF LAMPS AND BANNERS Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (Fiction None) $27.00 9, 29 ISBN: 978-0-31648-593-7
In a dystopian world of heavy fog, Nazi demonstrations, and a creeping virus, photographer Cass Neary searches for an ancient book that might have supernatural power.
Cass is a wreck. She’s lost her camera; she hasn’t heard from the love of her life, ex-con Quinn O’Boyle, in several days; and she’s jonesing for alcohol, speed, or anything else she can get her hands on. When she runs into rare-book runner Gryffin Haselton in London, he confesses that he’s about to make the sale of a lifetime to up-and-coming tech genius Tindra Bergstrand: a mysterious, arcane book that may have been written by Aristotle. Of course, things go horribly wrong: The middleman is murdered, and Cass and Gryffin escape only to be picked up by Tindra’s people. It turns out that Tindra wants the Aristotle text to scan into an app she’s developing that's supposed to heal the brains of people suffering from PTSD—but when Cass gets a glimpse of the Ludus Mentis app, she flashes back viscerally to the greatest trauma of her life. Reunited with Quinn, Cass is soon on the run, dodging neo-Nazis as they rally in London and following clues to a remote Scandinavian island, hoping that if she recovers the book it could pay her and Quinn’s way to a new start. Cass is walking wounded; still she views the world through the eyes of a true artist, an artist who feels the full weight of her calling. “Because what is a photographer,” she asks, “but a chooser of the slain, someone who decides who or what is destined for immortality?” Cass Neary is a tough, self-destructive character who still exudes compassion, courage, and love for the beauty and the pain of life—even more so because she recognizes its impermanence.
Part The Club Dumas, part The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, all punk attitude and beautiful ache.
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"Hand, Elizabeth: THE BOOK OF LAMPS AND BANNERS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A630892358/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7c26ea2d. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
The Book of Lamps and Banners. By Elizabeth Hand. Sept. 2020. 336p. Little, Brown, $27 (9780316485937); e-book, $13.99 (9780316485920).
After a four-year series hiatus, trouble-seeking photographer Cass Neary returns, picking up where she left us in Hard Light (2016). Separated from her boyfriend, Quinn, while fleeing the fallout from a Finnish killer's plot, Cass follows Quinn's cryptic clues to London, but, before she can find him, she is drawn into old acquaintance Gryffin Hazelton's plans to deliver a legendary, allegedly magical, book to a buyer's dealer. By the end of the night, the dealer is murdered, the book is stolen, and Cass and Gryffin are forcibly summoned by the buyer. Billionaire software designer Tindra Bergstrand is distraught: the book holds a primeval code that she needs to finish Ludus Mentis, an app that can rewire traumatic memories. Cass agrees to help: it's a win-win if the book furthers Tindra's world-saving vision, and Cass and Quinn can use the cash to hide from their pasts. Finally reunited, Cass and Quinn follow a trail of bodies to a remote Swedish island, where a former folk singer has traded fame for an underground neo-Nazi record label. It's a wild ride that defies comparison: pill-popping idealist Cass Neary's obsessive hunt piles on teeth-grinding, story-propelling tension, and Hand's gifted portrayal of subcultures seamlessly links Cass' past in New York's '80s punk scene, London's rare-book dealers, and Odinist neo-Nazis.--Christine Tran
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 American Library Association
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Tran, Christine. "The Book of Lamps and Banners." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 21, 1 July 2020, p. 22. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A632532768/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cf5f9b76. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
The Book of Lamps and Banners
Elizabeth Hand. Mulholland, $27 (336p)
ISBN 978-0-316-48592-0
The discovery of an ancient book of arcane lore bound in human skin and possibly written by Aristotle drives Hand's enjoyable if at times overplotted fourth Cass Neary thriller (after 2016's Hard Light). Cass, a middle-aged punk photographer hooked on alcohol and pills, is lying low in London on a false passport and desperate for money to get her and her boyfriend, Quinn, out of the country. On learning of the book's sale to an eccentric video game designer, Cass realizes that cutting herself in on the deal might just solve their problems. The buyer, Tindra Bergrstrand, needs the book to complete an app that can alter the user's mental state and trigger powerful, sometimes violent emotional memories. When the book is stolen from the dealer and Tindra disappears, Cass begins a frantic search to locate both Tindra and the book. The action hurtles toward an exciting climax on an island off the Swedish coast. That this adventure ends for once on a positive note for Cass, who so far has been living on an addict's ragged edge, will please series fans. Newcomers will find this a good entry point. Agent: Martha Millard, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Sept.)
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"The Book of Lamps and Banners." Publishers Weekly, vol. 267, no. 22, 1 June 2020, p. 38. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A626295515/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2366e8af. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
A HAUNTING ON THE HILL, by Elizabeth Hand
As Holly, the protagonist of Elizabeth Hand's ''A Haunting on the Hill,'' approaches an imposing, deserted mansion tucked off a remote country road, she drives past a tree stump that's ''choked with poison ivy, a riot of scarlet leaves and white berries.'' Though she doesn't know it yet, the tree that once stood there claimed the life of Eleanor Vance, the tragic lead from the novel's antecedent text, Shirley Jackson's wildly influential ''The Haunting of Hill House.'' And so, a couple dozen pages into the book, Hand makes her first decisive mark on Jackson's landscape, acknowledging her predecessor while making the house her own. When Jackson left Hill House, the tree was still standing. Hand is here to chop it down.
Holly finds herself so taken with the property that she decides to rent it for a few weeks, planning to use the space to rehearse her new play, ''Witching Night,'' a feminist reimagining of a 17th-century text about a woman who made a pact with the Devil. She's joined by her girlfriend Nisa, a gifted singer-songwriter adapting English murder ballads for the production, and her friend Stevie, who'll pull double duty as both Satan and sound designer. Rounding out the cast is Amanda, an aging actress who's barely worked since her murky involvement in a fatal onstage accident years before. All four are unmoored, seeking purpose through art, and vulnerable to the machinations of an evil house with motives of its own.
Like the poison ivy that curls around the tree stump, the house winds its tendrils around the new occupants. All was not well among the foursome even before their arrival at Hill House -- secret affairs, conflicts over artistic ownership -- and the strife ramps up once they take residence. Amanda, vain and paranoid, becomes convinced that the voices she hears in the night are her younger collaborators gossiping about her; Nisa fears her contributions to the play are being erased; and Stevie becomes enchanted by (and afraid of) a tiny, inexplicable door in the wall of his room.
Hand, the author of 20 novels, including ''Hokuloa Road,'' has long been preoccupied with the notion of artistic creation as a form of folk magic or conjuring, one that exacts its toll on body, mind or spirit. ''A Haunting on the Hill'' is shot through with that witchy sacrifice. In early rehearsals, the troupe feeds on the house's spooky vibes, producing electrifying, transcendent work. But nothing gold can stay, not in this house, and the characters are soon beset by increasingly terrifying events: strange slippages of time, photos and recordings that turn out distorted, odd noises and apparitions, and huge, uncanny black hares that haunt the property. Even warnings from the housekeeper and an ominous neighbor aren't enough to roust them from the house, though: The drive to recapture that magic of creation holds them captive.
In Jackson's story, the rotten, beating heart was never the house itself. It was damaged, doomed Eleanor, newly freed from a cruel mother, whose desperate neediness and formless identity opened the door to a mad kinship with the house, a sort of demented ouroboros of domestic bliss. Hand opens up the playing field: We don't know which, if any, of her characters might succumb to the house, which refracts and amplifies all their flaws and insecurities.
There are some direct echoes of Jackson's novel here -- Stevie's recording equipment picks up a bit of dialogue pulled from the pages of ''Hill House,'' and both the nursery and the tower host key scenes of terror. For the most part, though, Hand is responding to the source material on a deeper level, echoing Jackson's structure, characterization and storytelling beats rather than relying on superficial similarities. (The closest she comes to imitation is in the novel's short prologue, a direct answer to Jackson's opening paragraph of ''Hill House.'') And, above all, it's scary. Hand's facility with language and atmosphere and use of short, propulsive chapters work their own dark magic on the reader.
It's a compelling and frightening novel, but did it need to take place in Jackson's universe? Probably not -- and that's why it works. A lesser writer might've paid more overt homage to ''The Haunting of Hill House,'' or tried to imitate Jackson's singular prose style. Hand, wisely, does no such thing, opting for resonance over replication. In a landscape of soulless franchises geared toward quick, shallow hits of fan service, she has the maturity and talent to deliver the follow-up that Jackson's novel deserves (even if it didn't necessarily need one).
Like Jackson, Hand offers no explanation for Hill House's malevolence, preserving the original novel's power and mystery. The tree that claimed Eleanor's life may now be a stump, but it's a boundary marker all the same. Continue up the drive past this point and you'll see Hill House -- and it will see you, too.
A HAUNTING ON THE HILL | By Elizabeth Hand | Mulholland Books | 336 pp. | $27
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Hughes, Emily C. "Back at the House." The New York Times Book Review, 29 Oct. 2023, p. 8. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A770647443/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d0a594e9. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
A Haunting on the Hill. By Elizabeth Hand. Oct. 2023. 336p. Little, Brown/Mulholland, $30 (9780316527323); e-book (9780316527989).
In this unsettling tribute to Shirley Jackson, Hill House is hungry again. Playwright Holly Sherwin snags a coveted grant to stage her most ambitious play and identifies Hill House as the perfect place for the performance. Majestic and foreboding, the site evokes the essence of Holly's portrayal of renowned seventeenth-century witch Elizabeth Sawyer, who was said to have summoned the devil in dog form. Holly's up-and-coming singer-songwriter girlfriend, Nisa, has reworked dark folk ballads to guide the story, and acclaimed (but fading) actress Amanda Greer has signed on as Elizabeth. Holly's best friend, Stevie, rounds out the cast as Elizabeth's evil compatriot. Despite strange encounters with the houses prickly self-appointed guardian and vague warnings from its cook and caretaker, the first run-throughs of the play are magical. But it doesn't take long for the house to ferret out the cast members' vulnerabilities, and soon they're hiding their alternately alluring and torturous hauntings from each other as visceral distrust invades their retreat. Honoring Jackson's story while owning this revival, Hand deploys masterful storytelling to merge the house's familiar covetousness with witches' tales, feminist themes of repression and unfulfilled promise, and character evolution that subtly matches the house's growing malevolence. Pitch perfect. --Christine Tran
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 American Library Association
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Tran, Christine. "A Haunting on the Hill." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 1, Sept. 2023, p. 47. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A766069725/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=126c3722. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
Hand, Elizabeth A HAUNTING ON THE HILL Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (Fiction None) $27.00 10, 3 ISBN: 9780316527323
A struggling band of hopeful artists wander into the malevolent orbit of Hill House in this contemporary restaging of Shirley Jackson's classic novel.
Looking to escape New York City in the wake of the pandemic, Holly Sherwin and her partner, Nisa Macari, enjoy exploring charming "little towns long since colonized by self-styled artists and artisans." Holly, once a promising playwright, is now teaching English at a private school but has recently won a grant to produce the witchy play that may just revive her career. When she stumbles upon a creepy old mansion on an isolated hill, she knows she's found the perfect place to hole up with the small cast for two weeks of intensive rehearsals. Never mind that the owner is shady; never mind that the one neighbor threatens her with a knife as she drives by; never mind that the caretakers refuse to spend the night, ever, in the house--Holly knows it's going to galvanize her cast into the performances of their lives. When they all gather for a run-through of the script, she can feel the magic, the electricity in the air. But maybe the house's energy reflects more than the power of her words; there are also unexplained bloodstains on a tablecloth, an unearthly field of cold by the nursery, and mysterious voices at night. Not to mention the horrible black hares that keep popping up. Are they real or imaginary? Yes, and yes. While the novel doesn't draw any kind of straight line between Jackson's characters and Hand's, other than some "echoing" voices on a recording, clearly this novel is shaped around Jackson's legacy, not only in the setting, but also in the characters, specifically the relationship between Holly and Nisa. What she offers, then, is not merely retelling or update, but almost palimpsest.
A timeless, gothic ode that serves up the stuff of nightmares.
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"Hand, Elizabeth: A HAUNTING ON THE HILL." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A758849153/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6d29b405. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
Hand, Elizabeth. A Haunting on the Hill. Mulholland. Oct. 2023. 336p.
ISBN 9780316527323. $30. HORROR
Hand's (Hokolua Road) new novel revisits the infamous haunted house from Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House. Holly, a struggling playwright looking to flesh out her witchy comeback, thinks that Hill House, the eerie mansion she's stumbled across in Upstate New York, would be the perfect place to finish her play. She rents the house and takes her partner Nisa, a singer; their friend, sound guy/actor Stevie; and theater legend Amanda along, despite warnings and a disturbing first visit. The house rapidly reveals itself to be a malevolent force, playing on the past traumas and insecurities of its guests with typically devastating consequences. There are interesting side characters and unexpected plotting woven into the lovely prose, along with some nice nods to Jackson's original novel and the recent Mike Flanagan Netflix miniseries that fans will appreciate, although Hand's new novel lacks the subtlety and ambiguity of the original. VERDICT Where Jackson gave glimpses of possibility, Hand purposefully pulls back the curtain on a Hill House in its full derangement, but this hauntedhouse tale stands on its own very spooky legs.--Lacey Tobias
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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"A Haunting on the Hill." Library Journal, vol. 148, no. 9, Sept. 2023, p. 87. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A763124676/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d7b12491. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
In Elizabeth Hand's Hokuloa Road (Mulholland, July), a fictional Hawaiian island's stunning exterior conceals a dark heart--and a menacing stalker that isn't quite human. Hand, whose work has garnered multiple Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Awards, among other accolades, spoke with PW about isolation, climate change, and the Hawaii the tourists don't see.
What inspired this story?
My daughter lives in Maui, and I'm a cold gray North person living in Maine. On one visit to my daughter, I saw an abandoned building in a big field, painted over with many names and dates; they were the names of people who'd gone missing. Later, I came across a telephone pole covered with fliers in search of missing people. It was frightening on many levels, and as a writer, it opened so many doors.
I visited again in 2020 when my daughter was having her first child, and had to quarantine for two weeks when I arrived; after that, I had the chance to explore the island when there were virtually no tourists there. Grady, the main character of the book, is a late-20s carpenter from Maine who was thrown out of work during the pandemic and applies for a job as a caretaker for a wealthy man on a Hawaiian island, only to find that people are going missing.
How does his outsider status play out?
Grady is a haoli--or as we say in Maine, someone "from away." He's navigating a different environment, culture, typography. Maine is the whitest state per capita in the country; Hawaii has a remarkable mix of ethnicities and people from all over the world. Mainlanders' impressions of Hawaii are just of the resorts, and I wanted to show something different from that. When I first visited my daughter in Hawaii, it was disorienting and destabilizing and fascinating. I'm very aware that I barely scratched the tip of the iceberg--it's an intricate, complicated, beautiful place.
What intrigues you about Hawaii?
I'm fascinated by folklore, and setting determines so much about how a folklore develops. Dog spirits, the kaupe, are recurring characters in Hawaiian lore; I wanted to embellish while being respectful. Hawaii is a remote place that was a soveteign nation, and there's a lot of politics around that. There's a great deal of income disparity, as there is in Maine. There are wealthy Covid refugees who can afford to move to the islands, and then there's also a terrible housing shortage--there are houseless camps, and quite a few resort employees, people in the service industry, just living on the beach, because they can't afford a place to live.
Like several of your earlier novels, Hokuloa Road touches on environmental concerns. Why is that?
Humans haven't been in Hawaii for that long--the first navigators from Polynesia around 400 AD found an island that was mostly just full of birds, and when the white imperialists arrived, that was still true. Waves of introduced species, including humans, have wrought havoc on the ecosystem; the extinction rate for flora and fauna, particularly for birds, is very high. The lack of tourists for a year did allow it to recover a bit. There's a movement in the state to change the direction of tourism, to limit the number coming in, and to make changes like banning the types of sunscreen that cause die-off in the coral. The Easter egg in this novel is climate change.
--L.S.
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S., L. "Strangers in Paradise: PW talks with Elizabeth Hand." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 11, 14 Mar. 2022, p. 21. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A697982845/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=07ca31c9. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.