Generation Loss (2007)

Thirty years ago, Cassandra Neary's grim photos of punks and corpses briefly made her the toast of the downtown art scene. Now an alcoholic wage slave, Neary accepts a magazine assignment to interview one of her reclusive photographer heroes on a Maine island, where a rash of missing-teenager cases and an off-kilter populace grab her attention. It takes time to warm to the self-destructive, sour-tempered protagonist of Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss — she drives drunk, pops Adderall and Percocet, and generally tries to not stick out her neck. Luckily, Hand's terse but transporting prose keeps the reader turning pages until Neary's gritty charm does, finally, shine through. B