August 09, 2004

Another Green World

Posted by Henry

I’ve just finished Elizabeth Hand’s Mortal Love, which I recommend very highly; it’s the best novel she’s ever written. Her earlier work is sometimes extraordinary (if you can find a copy of Winterlong, buy it without hesitating) but it’s never quite under control - one has the impression of an artist struggling with her materials and every once in a while being overwhelmed by them. She’s overcome this in her recent shorter work - in particular “Cleopatra Brimstone,” and The Least Trumps. Both these stories have a technical mastery that was only sporadically present in her early work. They’re acute and sharp.

Mortal Love repeats this success at novel length. It has a wealth of materials - Richard Dadd (lightly disguised), Pre-Raphaelites, Henry Darger style outsider art - but handles them with style, grace and economy.

There are some splendid sketches of Victorian aesthetes and their world - a garrulous and malicious Swinburne, and a formidable, oracular Lady Wilde:

“I refer to your genius. If you do not have one, Mr Comstock, you will fail. If you do find one, it will devour you. It will destroy you, but in that case we will have your paintings to remind us of you in the event we want to be reminded.”

She seemed to consider this extremely unlikely.

The novel has the virtue of presenting these individuals as they conceivably might have appeared to themselves. Pre-Raphaelite art, far from being trite Arthurian kitsch, is dangerous and infused with sex. Just as “The Least Trumps” riffs on John Crowley’s Little, Big, so Mortal Love borrows a central image (the green woman, who contains worlds within herself) from Mike Harrison’s short story, Anima (‘Whatever lives here loves us. I know it does. But it only loves us once’). Yet the book isn’t in any sense derivative; it argues with this material and transforms it. Hand presents us with a muse who has her own, barely comprehensible motivations, who does not properly know herself, but who is endlessly fascinated with the traces that humans leave in the world through their art. Mortal Love ends not only with an apotheosis, but with two more intimate forms of transcendence - a once-mediocre writer who finds his art without losing himself, and an immortal who proves to have once been capable of creating art because of her loss and her fall. It’s an important book.

Posted on August 9, 2004 09:21 PM UTC
Comments

Garrulous and malicious Swinburne may have been, but damn, has anyone before or since ever been able to manipulate English so magnificently? He may not have had anything to say, but who cares; you just get lost in the flow of the words.

Yeah, I know nobody likes him but me, but heck, I spotted an excuse to mention him, and I took it.

Posted by Maynard Handley · August 9, 2004 10:17 PM

Man, I’ve wanted her to rope her material down into something coherent since I got burned so badly (but magnificently) by Waking the Moon. But Glimmering seemed like a bunch of steps in any of a number of wrong directions, so I stopped checking. (Never did finish Winterlong, and I’ve long since lost my copy.) —I’ll have to crack a copy next time I’m at Powell’s.

Posted by Kip Manley · August 9, 2004 10:49 PM

On a lower cultural register, I noticed that Elizabeth Hand was the author chosen to write the novelization of the Catwoman movie. I did not buy it, but spent a few minutes marvelling at the choice of the perfectly right writer for a perfectly wrong project.

Posted by Neel Krishnaswami · August 9, 2004 11:03 PM

I’m not much for fantasy of SF (whether that means science or speculative fiction) but the Eno reference was nice.

Posted by seth edenbaum · August 10, 2004 05:35 AM

I dunno, man. Like KM, I too have been burned badly by Elizabeth Hand. Apotheosis, transcendence, importance? These would be themes I’d want her to avoid.

Posted by Carlos · August 10, 2004 02:09 PM

I wasn’t exactly burned by Black Light, but it didn’t make me want to read more. I take it Henry is saying that I shouldn’t carry that lesson over to the new stuff.

Posted by Matt Weiner · August 10, 2004 08:19 PM

Maynard, Charles de Lint lost me completely by once using a Swinburne verse for an epigraph and attributing it to “folk”. Totally tin-eared, and the editor has even less excuse.

Posted by clew · August 11, 2004 07:40 AM

Hi Henry (and everyone else),

I just wanted to say thanks for the truly insightful review — you absolutely nailed my earlier stuff in your reference to me not always being in control of the material & being overwhelmed by it. Truer words never spake, or spoke. I’m glad you liked ML — it was the result of trying (for five years!) to get a handle on what I do so I wouldn’t screw it up — well, at least not screw it up completely. Thanks again …

All best,
Liz

Posted by Liz Hand · August 12, 2004 11:21 PM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.