Re: elizabeth hand

From: Janice E. Dawley (jdawley@TOGETHER.NET)
Date: Fri Jul 18 1997 - 17:27:44 PDT


At 02:45 PM 7/18/97 -0500, Erik Tsao wrote:

>Has anyone read Elizabeth Hand's _Awaken the Moon_ (recently published by
>Harper in mass market paper)? I just finished it and passed it on to a
>friend. Thoughts on the book?

I believe you mean _Waking the Moon_. I read it last summer and was quite
disappointed. I absolutely loved Hand's earlier novel _Winterlong_, and was
hoping for something as good -- instead I found a heavy-handed (and much
too lengthy) saga whose earthshaking insight was that women can be really
evil. The faces of Kali, Othiym, whatever -- how new is it to symbolize
women as either devourers or saints? I kept hoping that she would attempt
to stretch the boundaries of gender definitions and portray something new,
but my persistence was not rewarded. Frankly, I was amazed that this novel
won the Tiptree award. Anyone have insight as to why? Or can anyone show me
how I'm wrong in my reading of the novel?

-- Janice

-----
Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT
http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm
Listening to: Feed Your Head, Volume 2; The Best of Márta Sebestyén
"...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected;
the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and
servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:28 PDT