Review: Generation Loss, by Elizabeth Hand

Cassandra Neary is a burn out in the early 2000s, living in a rent-controlled apartment in New York City, working in the stockroom of a large bookstore, dealing with grief (a lost female lover) and her considerable chemical addictions. Her brief moment in the sun occurred in the mid 70s, when she gained fame and a book deal as a photographer. Her dark photographs chronicled the dark side of the nascent punk scene in New York City, capturing scenesters dead or dying of drug overdoses or crime scene victims. She never produced a second book, became an alcoholic and fell from grace into obscurity, eclipsed by the work Cindy Sherman and Annie Leibowitz. So when a friend from the old days offers her a chance to interview and take photographs of her hero, the reclusive Aphrodite Kamestos, it's an assignment that she can't resist, even if it opens up old wounds.

When she arrives in Maine, she finds herself unprepared for both the chilly weather and the brooding psychic atmosphere of the coast and its islands. Neary's natural intuitive nature is stirred. She is drawn to the dark side of life like a moth to flame, and we all know what happens to the moth in that situation. Her sixth sense' is a blessing and a curse, something she's carried around with her for ages.



The island where Aphrodite lives is bleak and beautiful. It was the subject of her galvanizing series of photographs that inspired Cass to become a photographer herself. The island and the surrounding archipelago are filled with local eccentrics and survivors from an abandoned commune that Kamestos and her husband presided over. Cass finds the landscape challenging, to say the least, and her meeting with Kamestos is explosive. It turns out that Kamestos, who is notoriously reclusive, was not expecting Neary. Not only that, Aphrodite is the patron goddess of burn out. She's rude, paranoid, and occasionally violent. Luckily, her son Gryffyn, who is also staying with her, is stable and offers to have Neary stay with them overnight.

In Cass Neary, Hand has created a memorable character. Her passion for photography is filtered through this novel, and her descriptions, done in Neary's voice, are spectral and unforgettable. Neary is a mess, a bit of a shit disturber, and an severe alcoholic. She is a force of nature on this island of lost souls, and Hand makes her just this side of sympathetic. She moves through life in haze of Jack Daniel's and prescription narcotics. How she becomes an unlikely heroine is fascinating character arc.

The Maine landscape is another character in this book. Former DC resident Hand moved there in the late 80s, and her love/hate relationship with its wintry wild beauty comes through. She (and Neary) turn Maine into a terrifying place, full of dead trees, cold water, rocks, and barely tamed nature. It's a place that you have to make a bargain with before it will let you see its treasures.

Hand's pet theme, the relationship between art and madness, comes through here clearly. Both Neary, Kamestos and the commune's survivor walked the razor's edge in search of art, and all are damaged by it. The title of the novel is perfect. Generation Loss is a photographic term, referring to reproduction of an image into another form (i.e., film to JPEG) and the clarity you lose in the transfer. It also refers to the lost generation of 70s—both Neary and the doomed artists' colony haven't fared well in the new century, and have to adapt. Hand has created a thriller about the emotional underpinnings of art—and it succeeds on both the visceral and meditative levels.

Generation Loss is also the winner of the recently established Shirley Jackson Awards.