Elizabeth Hand’s Swan of Tuonela

Perhaps I should post more frequent, shorter posts. So let me do this, briefly, late in the evening before I retire: the best story I’ve read in the past month is, catching up a bit since it’s a story published a year and a half ago, nearly, Elizabeth Hand’s “The Far Shore”, first published in the October/November 2009 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It is to Jean Sibelius’ “The Swan of Tuonela” what Black Swan is to Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”. And, if I were pitching it to a Hollywood executive, I would say, “The Far Shore” is, well, about a recluse in the woods, but it’s like Black Swan with a happy ending! Sorta ;)