I no longer felt drunk but terribly, horribly clear-headed. That kind of crazy acid awareness that comes to you sometimes when you know with absolute conviction that this is really the way the world is—not the mail coming at three o’clock every afternoon and dinner on the table by seven, late-model Volvo wagons full of kids and dogs and groceries; but decapitated heads wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator, children stuffed down garbage chutes, the man at the Post Office pulling out a .22 and pointing it at the woman ahead of you in line. I clutched the banister so tightly that a splinter wedged itself into my hand, but I hardly even felt it.
—Waking the Moon (155)
Elizabeth Hand’s fiction centers on these moments of terrible revelation, in which the thin veil maintaining her characters’ everyday mundane world is temporarily ripped away. The universe is revealed as much more terrible and much stranger than they could possibly have imagined. Institutes of higher learning are revealed to be a secret battleground between ancient cults who would revive the Goddess and those who would stop them. An arty small town that revolves around a charismatic film director is an operation to revive the worship of Dionysus. A disbanded hippy commune has become the centre for grisly and personal rituals. Hand’s books, which span genres and resist easy classification, show us the lives of these damaged outsiders who have caught a glimpse of the true world beyond the veil. Hers is a universe of botched rituals, punk rock, and outsider artists. Her damaged characters inhabit damaged worlds, whether they be a far-future Earth inhabited by mutants and posthumans or a post-9/11 New York where survivors of the original punk movement hustle and hide. But through the cracks in the world can also be glimpsed the chance for beauty and transcendence. Throughout Hand’s work, this opportunity for change, growth and redemption is always there, whether or not her characters are able to achieve it. Her novels find hope and beauty in the ruins, and tell us that however much we may have lost, closure and healing are still possible.
It helps that Hand is one of speculative fiction’s most impressive stylists. Her work is always a joy to read. She is a writer who has a palpable love of language—her writing frequently shows off her impressive vocabulary, but the way that she integrates strange or archaic words into her prose is so seamless that it never takes the reader out of the story. It all becomes part of the glorious flow of her prose. She’s also brilliant at drawing characters, pulling the reader into their peculiar perspectives. Whether it’s her indelible noir antihero Cass Neary, an aging alcoholic punk photographer, or the surviving members of British acid-folk rock band Windhollow Faire, she masterfully captures voice and attitude. Her work is formally ambitious, and throughout her career she has demonstrated an admirable reluctance to stay in one place. From works of dark academia to gritty crime novels tinged with cosmic horror to folk horror reimagined as rock documentary, Hand has covered it all. Today, I’m going to dig into some of her most iconic work.
Waking the Moon and Black Light
It makes sense to think of Waking the Moon (1994) and Black Light (1999) at the same time; though the books are not exactly sequels, they are thematically linked by the idea of cultists attempting to awake ancient gods in modern times, and by the presence of the Benandanti, a secret society that polices reemerging deities, and the character of Balthazar Warnick, their immortal and most faithful servant. In Waking the Moon, a university student attempts to reawaken the ancient spirit of the Goddess, and in Black Light a cult filmmaker tries to resurrect the cult of Dionysus. Waking the Moon won both the Otherwise Award (then called the James Tiptree Jr. Award) and the Mythopoeic Award, making it Hand’s most garlanded novel, but both stand as remarkable works of modern fantasy and deserve to be more widely read.
Waking the Moon is largely narrated by Sweeney Cassidy, a freshman at the University of the Archangels and St. John the Divine. There she meets and falls hard for two beautiful and mysterious friends, Angelica and Oliver. Coming from a working-class family, Sweeney finds the world of the Divine and its legacy students and secret societies daunting, and she is soon swept up in supernatural events beyond her control. Angelica plans to awaken the ancient spirit of the Goddess, bringing a trail of blood and human sacrifice in her wake, and Oliver has been bred by the Benandanti to stop her. Sweeney finds herself embroiled in an ancient magical struggle for power—one that may ultimately destroy her. Black Light is narrated byLit Moylan, the daughter of famous parents who live in the arty community of Kamensic, and godchild of legendary film director Alex Kern. When Alex Kern returns to Kamensic and throws a huge Halloween party, inviting the whole town, she discovers that her hometown is far more troubled by spirits and hauntings than she could ever have dreamt. Kern is planning to awaken the spirit of Dionysus, and Lit and her friends Ali, Hillary, and Jamie, like the rest of the town, are about to be caught in the crossfire.
Both novels subvert the New Age, hippyish penchant for appropriating old religions and traditions to highlight the darker aspects of these belief systems. Hand reminds us that modern interpretations of ancient religions tend to sanitize the more troubling aspects of these beliefs, and we forget this at our peril. Hand restores the blood and violence, reminding us that matriarchy can be just as violent and destructive as patriarchy, and that following Dionysus may look like fun but has its price. Both novels are set against the coming of age of young women for a reason—in both cases, innocence is the first victim of these cults. But the flipside to this is that both Sweeney and Lit ultimately are the ones who have the power to resist, to prevent these destructive old gods from being reborn.
It’s telling that in both books, Balthazar Warnick, as the representative of the Benandanti, sets himself up as the reasonable alternative to the dangerous cults, but for all his magical powers and his immortality, he himself is unable to affect meaningful change. The Benandanti are ultimately responsible for maintaining the status quo. They’ve set up the patriarchal Abrahamic religions in order to make sure that their power is maintained over the generations so that they can combat the old gods when they try to return. But for all their political machinations, they wind up being ineffective against either the Goddess or Dionysus. Sweeney and Lit are the ones who ultimately ensure the rituals of rebirth are aborted, by refusing the script forced on them by both the Benandanti and the ancient gods who oppose them.
Winterlong and Glimmering
Winterlong (1988) and Glimmering (1997) are Hand’s end-of-the-world books. Winterlong was Hand’s first published novel, and was followed by two sequels, Aestival Tide (1992) and Icarus Descending (1993). Set in a transfigured Washington, D.C. in the far future, it follows two twins separated at birth—Wendy Wanders, an empath who can kill people with her mind, and Raphael Miramir, the most glamourous and sought-after member of the city’s trained sex workers—as they navigate the collapse of their world orchestrated by the Aviator, a posthuman renegade who wants to awaken the Gaping Lord. It ambitiously combines elements of cyberpunk and Arthur Machen’s ecstatic horror with a science fantasy setting that puts one in mind of Gene Wolfe. Glimmering is a novel of millennial dread, which envisions the world ending at the end of the ’90s when gases in the atmosphere are ignited, blotting out the sun and stars and blanketing the sky in burning, coloured lights. Jack Finnegan is a literary publisher, bunkered down in Lazyland, his family mansion in Yonkers, and dying of AIDS. His friend and ex-lover Leonard Thrope provides him with a drug that can extend his life, but at a price Jack might not want to pay. In the meantime, Leonard’s also filming VR footage of Trip Marlowe, a Christian rock star about to make a spectacular fall from grace, and playing both sides in a conflict between the people who want to rebuild the world and the terrorist organization that wants to finish humanity off for good. Both novels vividly imagine troubled characters looking for a sense of resolution or closure in a dying world whilst events are manipulated by a Lord of Misrule character.
Winterlong is the more fantastical novel, featuring roving gangs of mutant children and a city overrun with carnivorous plants. Being a debut, it’s messier and less disciplined than Glimmering’s take on the same themes, but it carries an energy and excitement all of its own. Both Wendy and Raphael are fascinating characters, their innocence thrown into question by the death and destruction they leave in their wake. The novel also features a malevolent god awakened by the psychic experiments on Wendy, which the Aviator plans to unleash on the city, anticipating the themes later explored more fully in Waking the Moon and Black Light. There’s also a memorable supporting cast—particularly the troop of actors that Wendy travels with, which includes Miss Scarlet, an uplifted chimpanzee who dreams of one day becoming human.
Glimmering is the more mature work, and contains some of Hand’s most powerful writing. Although the novel’s anxieties about the end of the century now inevitably feel tied to that particular time, what struck me rereading it is how resonant its descriptions of living in a ruined world with no future feel in 2025. While the novel’s burning sky is there for the psychedelic aesthetic, its cause lies in human-caused climate change and pollution. Hand imagines a USA ravaged by pandemics and extreme weather systems, where the evangelical far right has a stranglehold on popular culture and doomsday cults are popping up everywhere. But perhaps the strongest thing that comes through in Glimmering is the sense of melancholy that underpins even the novel’s most Dionysian characters. Whereas Wendy and Raphael from Winterlong are young and have only ever known the post-apocalyptic world, Jack and Leonard from Glimmering are old enough to have lived through more optimistic times. Jack in particular suffers from survivor’s guilt and is in mourning for both the people and the world he lost. But this melancholy even makes itself felt in Leonard—as the novel’s Lord of Misrule character, in many ways he was born for these apocalyptic times, and is one of the few people who knows how to thrive in them, but at his core is a deep anger at a world that has gotten this bad.
Cass Neary and Wylding Hall
I’m grouping the Cass Neary books and Wylding Hall (2015) together because I see them as Hand’s most sustained and impressive exercises in character voice. The Cass Neary novels, comprising Generation Loss (2007), Available Dark (2012), Hard Light (2016) and The Book of Lamps and Banners (2020), are inextricably tied to the unforgettable voice of the series’ antihero protagonist. And Wylding Hall is a folk horror fairy tale told in the form of a documentary about an acid folk rock band, the story revealed through interviews with the surviving band members, their manager, and their friends. Considered together, they also demonstrate the centrality of music, particularly punk and rock, to Hand’s writing, and show her deftness at twisting genre conventions. Whilst Wylding Hall’s striking genre experimentation is immediately obvious, the Cass Neary books, which are marketed as crime novels, contain an undercurrent of dark fantasy and suggestions of cosmic horror which only deepen as the novels progress, creating a unique and powerful series of books that can be read as either genre.
Wylding Hall is a love letter to both the British psychedelic-tinged folk rock of the late ’60s and early ’70s and to the sinister folk tales that give the genre much of its lifeblood. If you think of the soundtrack to The Wicker Man (1973), or perhaps Fairport Convention’s Liege & Lief (1969) imagined as a folk horror film, you wouldn’t be far off. The novella tells the story of Windhollow Faire, the greatest ’70s folk rock band you’ve never heard of, who are sent to Wylding Hall, a crumbling house in the countryside, by their manager Tom Haring to write songs and record their masterpiece. While they wind up recording the album they name after the house and it becomes their masterpiece and musical legacy, their fragile lead guitarist and singer songwriter Julian Blake falls under the spell of a mysterious girl he meets at the house, and both of them disappear. This inevitably leads to the collapse of the band and the making of an enduring rock and roll myth.
The novella draws both on the rock and roll tragedies that shaped bands like Fairport Convention and on the folk tales in the songs they covered, particularly “Tam Lin” with its story of a young man abducted by the Fairy Queen. Hand manages to create a palpable air of folk horror menace, whilst at the same time beautifully capturing the friendships and rivalries that shape inter-band dynamics. The story is told entirely through interviews with the surviving members of Windhollow Faire and their friends and associates, which are to be used in a fictional documentary. Hand expertly manages to convey what these characters are like through how they talk about the past, each other, and the trauma at the centre of their story. It’s a brilliant work, and pairs well with Rob Young’s Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music (2010), a factual account of the British folk rock scene that Hand fictionalizes so compellingly.
The Cass Neary books contain some of Hand’s most beautiful and bleak writing. Much of this is down to Cass herself, who is a brilliant character and an absolute car crash of a human being. Cass was a photographer in 1970s New York, where her strikingly bleak vision briefly chimed with the New York downtown punk scene she captured on film. Now, she is burned out, surviving day to day on drugs and alcohol, and reeling from the death of her estranged partner Christine in the 9/11 attacks. Generation Loss kicks off when her acquaintance Phil Cohen gives her an assignment to interview the legendary photographer Aphrodite Kamestos, now a recluse living in the ruins of a hippy commune in the desolate islands of Maine. Reluctant but desperate for the pay, Cass agrees and finds herself caught up in a decades-long case involving ritualized murders. This leads to a trail of revelations and personal disasters, resulting in Cass travelling to Finland and becoming embroiled in murders in the Nordic death metal scene in Available Dark, with gangsters and an underground filmmaker in Land’s End in Hard Light, and the theft of a manuscript rescued from the Library of Alexandria in The Book of Lamps and Shadows.
While the Cass Neary books are structured like crime thrillers, they have an edge of dark fantasy and cosmic horror that runs throughout them. Cass may be damaged, but she has the ability to see damage in others. This is part of what made her such a potent punk photographer, and it also helps her to uncover people’s dark secrets. Cass’s ability feels almost supernatural, and increasingly so as the series continues. And while it’s the only aspect of the novels that could be considered supernatural, these are books that explore the darker side of humanity, full of violent rituals and a bleak nihilism that wouldn’t be out of place in True Detective’s iconic first season. Cass is the perfect vehicle to explore the dark, seamy underbelly of the modern world. She is an outcast and a loner, and prone to violence and bad decisions herself. She keeps solving mysteries and murders not because of a personal moral code, but because she finds herself drawn to the destructive and damaged people she encounters. Cass knows that ultimately, she is as much a part of the darkness as the people she brings to justice, and this shapes the beautiful but starkly bleak world of her novels, as seen through her jaded, cynical, and world-weary eyes.
Even beyond these books, Hand has produced a remarkable body of work that spans genres. More recently, her novel Hokuloa Road (2022) is a crime novel that taps into some of the same dark energy of the Cass Neary novels, and A Haunting on the Hill (2023) is a sequel to Shirley Jackson’s iconic The Haunting of Hill House (1959). It makes sense that Hand would be one of the few modern writers to match Jackson’s dark literary vision. She effortlessly combines beautiful prose with chilling atmosphere and complex and damaged characters. At the heart of her writing lies a desire to understand what makes people act the way they do when they are at their worst, along with a sincere belief and hope that people can achieve redemption and become their better selves. In many ways, Hand’s understanding of humanity and the apocalyptic tenor of her work makes her the perfect writer to chronicle the troubled and troubling times in which we live.
