Title: The Great and Secret Show
Author: Clive Barker
Published: 1989
Pages: 658
Rating: 5/5
Picked up this book in my new favorite used book store (unfortunately in Seattle), because I've always wanted to read Clive Barker and I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Started to read it in the airport on my way home, and man, does this book kick ass.
The main idea builds from Carl Jung's collective unconscious theory; Barker paints it as a sea called Quiddity that we visit three times in our lives, in dreams. Once on the night we are born, once the night we first lie next to the person we will love the most, and once on the night before we are to die. I was pretty much hooked from right there.
Anyway, this concept is explored through a plot that casts good against evil in an epic showdown and leaves room for character transformations aplenty. And keeps the reader guessing, which I appreciated. The plot is better than most, by far. I've read better, but not often.
Beyond the story craftsmanship, Barker is an incredible writer. His words consistently bear the ring of truth and his characters are both believable and sympathetic. They develop in arcs that lend generously to the intrigue of The Great and Secret Show. I particularly loved the dichotomy (and balance) between Fletcher and The Jaff, but I'll leave it for you to discover what all that's about.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the occult, the otherworldly, the supernatural. Also, just so you're not surprised by this, as I was: this is the first book of a trilogy. It is readable as a standalone novel, however, as is the second installment. The third book has not yet been written, though Barker apparently speaks about it often.
A couple of quotes I enjoyed enough to write down:
"She no longer had to keep her cynicism polished; no longer had to divide her imaginings from moment to moment into the real (solid, sensible) and the fanciful (vaporous, valueless). If (when) she got back to her typewriter she'd begin these tongue-in-cheek screenplays over from the top, telling them with faith in the tale, not because every fantasy was absolutely true but because no reality ever was."
"It had been as claustrophobic as she'd anticipated, but at midnight on Christmas Eve, walking on Fifth Avenue, a forgotten feeling had sucked all the breath from her, and brought her to tears in an instant: that once she had believed. That belief had come from inside, out. Not taught, not bullied, just there. The first tears that had come were gratitude for the bliss of knowing belief again; their sisters, sadness that it passed as quickly as it had come, like a spirit moving through her and away."
"The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? Hello world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted."
