Generation loss - that's what happens when you endlessly reproduce a photographic image. You lose authenticity, the quality deteriorates in each subsequent generation that's copied from the original negative, and the original itself decays with time, so that every new image is a more degraded version of what you started with.This was absolutely fantastic - I can't believe I've never run into this author before, but what a knockout of a book this was. It reminded me at times of Nicola Griffith's

I don’t write reviews. I’ve never read Hand before. In fact I ignored Wylding Hall. However, the description I happened upon regarding Generation Loss told of a photographer. One who instantly reminded me of Arbus and Mapplethorpe, etc. Ok, Hand, you got me. She might have caught me, but I enjoyed the trap. Cass is terrible and true. It all felt very cool and strange and hip, to those in the know. The ending was a bit of a letdown. I wanted something bigger and far more elaborate. I can’t compla...

My Year of (Mostly) Mysterious Women continues with series fiction featuring women detectives. I’m avoiding police procedurals and standalone “women in peril'' thrillers to focus on ladies who are amateur sleuths. Generation Loss is my introduction to author Elizabeth Hand and her series featuring Cassandra Neary. Published in 2007, this novel is like the most potent medicine: tastes terrible going down but the stuff in the bottle works. Not a detective mystery, or a "catch the psycho" thriller,...

Generation Loss is impossible to put down, in the same way that it's impossible to refrain from poking a beached dead seal with a stick: repellent but compelling. Hand combines a bunch of unlikely elements - an aging meth head, a famous photographer, a serial killer, an artists' commune, a sullen teenager, and the lonely, tangled wilds of the Maine coast - into a lean and perfect tale about endurance and redemption. A beautiful and unsettling book.

I don't know how to feel about this book. I don't feel objective, which is funny given how much Generation Loss is about the intersection of art and consumer. As a love letter for Maine isolated weirdness that people from Away don't get to see, it's amazing. (Content warning: I talk about rape behind the cut.) (view spoiler)[ As a commentary on cults of personality destroying themselves and others, it's unparalleled. As a reflection of how small towns affect the younger generation, it's insightf...

Wow. This book was less than sub par. So cliche and poorly written. I’m astonished by all the five star ratings. Clearly those people have very low expectations for mystery novels. So many eye roll worthy moments that were unbearably forced. Horrible book club choice (not made by me).

In the book "Generation Loss" by Elizabeth Hand we enter the life of Cass "Scary" Neary, a self-destructive photographer. who captures on film the Punk scene of the '70's , and became famous for her efforts, as she lived the punk life and not just capture it on film. We join her as she has become a much older uninspired investigator as Cass is now a sneering, pill-popping junkie. This may be due to Cass also being the victim of a violent rape that ended her love affair with the punk scene. In an...

I did not like this mystery thriller, ‘Generation Loss’ in so many ways until page 150! The author Elizabeth Hand has written a mystery story with strong literary novel overtones. But Hand spends too much time to suit me setting up the action and characters for two-thirds of the book. But it IS done in a wonderfully crafted atmosphere of gloom, rain, dark forests, grim rocky islands, and tons of mysterious and vaguely threatening characters her heroine meets on what is clearly her adventure into...

I get all the Elizabeths with the four-letter last names confused, and I thought I had tried Elizabeth Hand already. Nope. (It was probably Elizabeth Bear but there is also an Elizabeth Moon.) When Jeff VanderMeer gave a glowing review to the most recent Cass Neary book, I felt I missed something and got the first book in the series immediately. Fantastic. Darker and grittier than I expected, loved Cass, loved the hint at potential supernatural elements that may just be the side effect of a drug...

Finally. Eureka. A strong female lead, a middle aged single woman whose existenz isn’t defined with the platitudes of a man hunt. OK, so she’s a junkie and an alcoholic – her main love in life is Jack Daniels and Corona. Actually, that IS her life, now: questing from hit to hit, focused on the singularity of a microscopic raison d’etre in order to avert, no subvert, a kaleidoscope of opportunity costs, each one destined to crystallise an actuality of failed possibility.Cass Neary is strummed of

I first started reading Elizabeth Hand's books in the mid 90's. I've always had a hard time exactly describing my response to her books. Her early works (the books I read in the mid 90's) were EXTREMELY dark post-apocalyptic science fiction. Beautifully written - I used to say that if other books were like cotton, her books were velvet. Maybe a better comparison is water and blood. Generation Loss is different. It's more or less a mystery, set in modern day, and not science fiction. I suspect, f...

I first encountered Elizabeth Hand via her debut novel, Winterlong . I thought it was great, if a bit opaque, and I liked her subsequent books, Æstival Tide and Icarus Descending , almost as much. Slightly earlier, I had also discovered similar writer Richard Grant, and was surprised to find they were a couple. I liked them both, but in my mind, both went wrong when they started writing less SFF and more contemporary, real world fantasy. In Hand's case, with Glimmering .In Generatio...

Now that is how you write a compelling, sympathetic character who is messed up and self-destructive. I loved the gorgeous, effective writing, the subtle creeping up on you mystery, and Hand's evocative images and setting (the coast of Maine). I also loved how this book is deeply uninterested in respectability politics for queer characters. I will definitely be continuing with this series.

Pretty good stuff. I like me some hard-bitten women protagonists who also kick ass.

3.5A reread from 10 years ago. The first in the Cass Neary series, which should become a streaming series at some point in the future. This one feels the most autobiographical, and takes a while to get going. Part one builds the character who becomes an integral part of the story in part two. Hand’s sense of place is absorbing, if not wholly comfortable. She doesn’t judge the people around her, or should I say she judges them as an insider would. And her sense of these people who live on the mar...

Had I read Elizabeth Hand's work before, I might have been very surprised at this book. When I met Elizabeth this past summer and expressed my praise for such a wonderful book, she expressed some doubt if I would like her other work as it was more standard fantasy. It was only later in a seminar about the experience of writing the book that I got a deeper glimpse into her reasoning: She hated writing this book.I can see why. "Generation Loss" is as disturbingly beautiful as the photography the p...

An aging punk-rock photographer travels to Maine, aka Vacationland, to visit a brilliant reclusive artist who hasn't spoken in decades -- and discovers a world of weirdness and horror. The meditation on seeing, and how the observer changes what is seen, is brilliant, and so is the the extended metaphor for photography as a way of turning light and time into images. Cass Neary is a brilliantly unpredictable fuckup, great protagonist.

CW: (view spoiler)[Brutal rape, alcohol, drugs, death (hide spoiler)]4.5 StarsI see youWell of course this won the first ever Shirley Jackson award!I loved the gothic elements that created quite a creepy and atmospheric read. Cass is a washed up photographer whose penchant for drugs and alcohol after the loss of her lover, Christine, make her a damaged and disturbed main character. Her obsession with death as the main subject in her artwork makes us as Readers feel quite uneasy about her from th...

I would've been much more into Generation Loss if Hand didn't take 200 pages to get the plot going somewhere and didn't meander in the meantime on overlong explanations about the wonders of photography or photographic artists and the continuing drug abuse of Cass Neary, the main character. It just got a bit old, and I didn't really get into what some reviewers seem to consider the beauty of the book (or of the Maine coast). To me it just sounded grim and lifeless, and while there isn't anything

Imaginative and dark, Generation Loss features a tough, self-destructive character. It's brilliantly written, atmospheric, and memorable. A terrific read.