Generation Loss

Generation Loss is about Cass, a casualty of the punk rock generation, one who barely limped out of it. This era is a great inspiration to Hand’s creativity and I certainly don’t mind that she keeps returning to it. Cass is a photographer who has an interesting view of the world, and most of the book hinges on strange and different ways of viewing the world, mostly through a camera lens, but like most of Hand’s book it dwells on creativity in a myriad of forms, including music a big concern of hers. This makes sense given how primal music is.

Photography is very important and the title has multiple, very important, meanuings.

Hand uses an island on Maine as a setting, and captures much of the winter crazinesss and bleakness well.

This book also drops names to other Hand books, including Cass being from Kamensic.

Unlike most of Hand’s books this is not straight fantasy (it has hints that something more is going n but the characters are probably just crazy). Generation Loss is difficult to classify, uncomfortable, spiky. She both fights with and against the conventions of the thriller genre to get at an evil deeper than its mere perpetrator. When the killer is revealed, it's more a confirmation of dread than a surprise. So although Generation Loss moves like a thriller, it detonates with greater resound. Highly recommended.