Errantry: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand

As Errantry is a collection of ten short stories, several things happen in the book. Overrall, each short story is about seemingly ordinary people, who turn out to be strange and bizarre at times. In the short story “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon”, a man named Emery and his friend Robbie learn that an old friend of theirs, Maggie, is terribly ill with advanced stage breast cancer. Throughout the story, the two ruminate and reflect about Maggie and their time at the museum they work at. While looking back, Emery and Robbie come across footage of the Bellerephon flight, which unexpectedly crashed during its first flight, so Emery decides to reenact the flight. In the short story “Hungerford Bridge,” two friends, Miles and Robbie meet up for lunch to catch up with each other. The both lead busy lives in London, so it is not often that they get to see each other. They see something strange, and Miles tries to explain it to Robbie, they argue about it, then Miles suddenly gets up and leaves with no further explanation, leaving Robbie confused. “Winter’s Wife” is told through the point of view of a young man named Justin, who doesn’t feel as if he belongs in the place he is from. He helps Winter build a home for his pregnant wife, Vala, and soon learns that his neighbor sold his land, and the developer he sold it to is destroying the land around them. This story focuses a lot on nature and how the characters within the story treat the land around them.“The Return of the Fire Witch” is enticing by it’s title alone. It sounds as if it is fantastic, yet frightening and dominant. In this story, the character Saloona Morn and the fire witch are looking to exact revenge on the new king, who they believe has a vendetta against th...

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...n a way, they are real since Hand draws inspiration from real people and places she knows. I found the conversations between the characters to be very real and natural. The descriptive words Hand uses are vivid and unlike the descriptors used in other books, and they really help move the stories forward and help the reader visualize exactly what is going on. In other words, Hand does a great job of setting up a scene.
As for the way that Hand ends her short stories, she leaves them very open ended, which allows the reader to use their own imaginations to come up with what happens next. I actually like this because most stories have the ending included, which doesn’t leave much open for interpretation. By leaving the reader hanging, Hand is able to engage the reader even more by giving them a say in what happens next. She in a way makes her stories more interactive.