Black Light, by Elizabeth Hand

In the north of New York State, there's a little place called Kamensic, where everyone's at least a second-rate actor, and there are too many stars for anyone to be much struck by them. Perhaps it's a little strange that Kamensic isn't on street signs or maps, a little strange that they put lumpy clay masks out instead of pumpkins for Halloween -- but the locals seldom notice those things either locals. Except for Lit, who wants to leave, but who faces a parade of entitled men and gods who think they hold rights over her body and her life.

Black Light is steeped in detailed reality - it doesn't surprise me that there's a cover quote from William Gibson on my copy, who always seems to know what's in his characters' pockets and on their coffee tables. The description is based on references to culture I didn't grow up breathing, so that to fully follow it I kept having to stop and look up what kind of cartoons George Booth drew, and similar. When I was away from Google or in bed too late at night to bother, I ended up with no picture of what kind of art was on the main character's walls, but while I'm stopping and checking it makes the book vivid and exact. (It turns out I did grow up breathing George Booth cartoons, I just didn't know the name).

For all that, the main problem I have with this book is the balance between mundane reality and its ghosts and gods. The main character, Lit, has seen visions of Dionysos, or someone like Dionysos, three times before I'd gotten a good sense of who she was herself, with a chapter from the point of view of an ancient Orphic cultist thrown in for good measure. And that's kind of what the book's about, Lit trying to establish herself as more than another meander of the pattern she's been caught in, but I still didn't enjoy it. I'd have preferred the scales tipped towards day-to-day life, instead of having the divine come tearing through the backdrop before I'd had much chance to see what was painted on it. Everyone in this book is in film and theatre, but it only matters for grace notes. When the second chapter began with the line, "The most important thing you have to understand is that we lived in a haunted place", after the very clear, in many ways beautifully portentous events of the first chapter, I said to myself, "Yeah, already got that, actually."

(I really want to read Hard Light now, a later book of Hand's; I'd already heard that it submerged its magic to the point of deniability, and I just read a moment ago in a comment on rachelmanija's blog that it's also about the film industry.)