by Elizabeth Hand
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Product Description
Widely praised and widely read, Elizabeth Hand is regarded as one of America's leading literary fantasists. This new collection (an expansion of the limited-release Bibliomancy, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2005) showcases a wildly inventive author at the height of her powers. Included in this collection are "The Least Trumps," in which a lonely women reaches out to the world through symbols, tattooing, and the Tarot, and "Pavane for a Prince of the Air," where neo-pagan rituals bring a recently departed soul to something very different than eternal rest. Written in the author's characteristic poetic prose and rich with the details of traumatic lives that are luminously transformed, Saffron and Brimstone is a worthy addition to an outstanding career.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
fantasy fiction with true grit , 2008-02-13
This collection is a must read for fans of Hand. Although the body of work is inconsistant; this is a jewel of a read. Winterlong remains the best title but these stories are a good follow up for those newer readers.
This is a good solid step toward a wider audience.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 Beautiful prose but Private Idaho, 2007-04-29
Hand's often lucid, simple prose will stay with you as well as the intricately symbolic plotting. Some stories (Cleopatra Brimstone, a tightly woven morality tale) are much more satisfying than others (Wonderwall, a drug-drenched memoir of youth well lost).
But there is a self-referencing in all this that is disturbing. There is scant regard for others, indeed almost everyone except the narrator is 'the Other" in these tales. The repetitive taking of human life or consciousness seems as easy and frequent as in a gallery video game. One sure sign of growing up is recognizing the universality of our supposed uniqueness. Hand has real talent, but to write at a more meaningful level will require that her characters start loving someone other than themselves.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Brilliant and Beautiful, 2007-04-17
Elizabeth Hand's intoxicating story collection "Saffron and Brimstone" has the subtitle of "strange stories." Exactly so. The opening tale, "Cleopatra Brimstone," features a plain American Jane with an interest in entomology, who morphs into a London-dwelling goth chick who renames herself Cleopatra Brimstone and develops a unique method of collecting butterflies.
The next tale, "Pavane for a Prince of the Air," is an elegy for a dying hippie and an elegy for the era in which the author came of age.
Then comes the delightful (and sunnier) "The Least Trumps," in which a tattoo artist finds a deck of tarot cards at a rummage sale and discovers they have the ability to change the past.
"Wonderwall" (the reason for story's title will soon become apparent) returns us to the scene of the author's masterful novel "Waking the Moon"--"The University of Archangels and Saint John the Divine" (actually Catholic University) in Washington D.C. It's another ode to the author's past, or so I would suppose.
The last four stories come under the rubric of "The Lost Domain: Four Story Variations," a series of understated, impressionist, prose poems that will probably leave you giddy. "Kronia" deals with memory; "Calypso in Berlin" is about the creation of art (and love); "Echo" is narrated by a woman who might be the last person on earth (or not), while it riffs on the Greek myth of Echo and Narkissos (as Ms. Hand spells it); "The Saffron Gatherers" is about art collecting and real estate, and . . . and then something happens.
Exhilarating, uplifting, wondrous, and certainly strange.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Fantastic!, 2007-04-10
I have been a fan of Elizabeth Hand since high school and haven't read anything of hers for a couple of years. When I found this book I was capitivated. Her words and worlds suck you in and don't let you go until they are over. She always leaves you wanting more!
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
The World from the Edge of Her Vision, 2007-04-10
I've only known Elizabeth Hand's work through her stunning novel, _Mortal Love_. I was most anxious to delve into this collection after reading reviews of Bibliomancy. Hand is such a good writer, she can't really disappoint, and in the first story she really put the dread in me... I had to put the book down awhile before getting up the nerve to finish that one and go on. My favorite story from the first section however, is _The Least Trumps_,I thought that was just stellar, except... it cried out, to me anyway, to be a much longer piece. There were so many layers of relational complexity between the characters that I longed to have fleshed out and maybe concluded. Perhaps her ambiguity was deliberate, but the writing was so good otherwise, one could hardly help wish for some revelation at least of how the magic worked that transmuted the Trumps to reality and the perceptions of the characters living therein.
The last section, _The Lost Domain_, was very creative, maybe not evenly so, _Calypso in Berlin_ and _The Saffron Gatherers_ being the standouts of the quartet. Overall, I just reveled in reading her once again, how she deals with ideas, themes, change, loss, connection, separation.
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