From Publishers Weekly
Hand (
Black Light) explores the theme of artistic inspiration and its dangerous devolvement into obsession and madness through three interwoven narrative threads in this superb dark fantasy novel. In late Victorian England, American painter Radborne Comstock makes the acquaintance of Evienne Upstone, a model who's inspired members of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and driven painter Jacobus Candell completely insane. More than half a century later, Radborne's grandson Valentine ends up institutionalized after viewing intensely erotic paintings grandpa produced under Evienne's spell. His experiences echo those of Daniel Rowlands, an American writer in contemporary London whose research into the legend of Tristan and Iseult brings him into contact with Larkin Meade, a fey lover whose passion leaves him physically and emotionally deranged. Subtle parallels and resonances between the subplots suggest that Evienne and Larkin are, impossibly, the same being: a force of nature incomprehensible to mortals, whom countless doomed artists have translated imperfectly into aesthetic ideals of beauty and love. Hand does a marvelous job of making the ineffable tangible, lacing her tale with references to the work of artists ranging from Algernon Swinburne to Kurt Cobain and capturing the intense emotions of her characters in exquisitely sculpted prose. With its authentic period detail and tantalizing spirit of mystery, this timeless tale of desire and passion should reach many readers beyond her usual fantasy base.
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From Booklist
What do Daniel Rowlands, an American critic in London to write a book on Tristan and Iseult, and Radborne Comstock, a young American painter navigating the London of 1883, have in common? Both are in thrall to a beautiful woman who has auburn hair, artistic leanings, and strange powers. Also captivated are Comstock's grandson, who sees the woman's image in one of his grandfather's paintings, and Thomas Learmont, a nineteenth-century physician in charge of an insane asylum with two patients--one of whom is a woman with auburn hair. Hand, who also wrote the cult favorite
Waking the Moon (1994), deftly weaves her novel of obsession and enchantment with many threads, moving back and forth in time and laying in folklore, pre-Raphaelite painting, the poetry of Algernon Swinburne, and the geography of London, both Victorian and modern, among its other strands. This book beguiles with its fusion of fantasy with convincing characters and richly drawn settings.
Mary Ellen QuinnCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
