The Great and Secret Show

I last read The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker back when I was a teenager. I loved it then. I wasn't sure how I'd react to it as an adult.

I'm happy to report the writing holds up really well. It stands the tests of time and experience. This novel is still staggeringly imaginative, exciting, and moving.

What makes this novel unique—what makes many of Mr. Barker's novels unique—is a narrative structure built on an escalating series of crises and climaxes. The conflict that opens the story would be the climax of an entire novel in the hands of a lesser writer. For Mr. Barker, however, it's just the beginning. Then he ramps up to another conflict and climax, and another, and another—building tension and emotional investment to a show more fever pitch.

His vision is so sweeping, so huge, so detailed and encompassing, he needs multiple crises and narrative climaxes in order to hold it all and do it justice.

His imagination works on a grander scale than the rest of us. It impresses me as much now as it did when I was younger.

Unfortunately, there's one aspect of The Great and Secret Show that doesn't work for me as an adult:

The love-at-first-sight romance between Howie and Jo-Beth is a lot harder for me to accept this time around.

I know it's supposed to reinforce a sense of Fate that's central to the mysteries of the story, and it's necessary to fuel one of the major conflicts between characters. On that level it works fine.

But Howie's actions demonstrate a painfully adolescent concept of love. I can't find the same emotional power in it that it wielded when I was younger. Indeed, I'm a bit embarrassed to recall how moving their relationship was for me when I was, myself, adolescent.

Mostly, though, as an adult, what I see in Howie now is yet another man who thinks it's romantic to ignore when a woman says no and to bull through every attempt she makes to set limits. Yet another man who's certain that he knows what she wants better than she knows herself. Yet another man whose concept of persistence blurs the line between romance and stalking.

It made me deeply uncomfortable. I suppose, though, I should be impressed that Mr. Barker remembers so clearly what love feels like as a teenager and depicted it so accurately.

Otherwise, I found this book to be just as enjoyable now as it was when I was teenager. It was a most welcome discovery. show less

I reread this because I remembered the first part being really good when I read it many years ago. That part is still good. The premise is great. Then it drags on for 300 pages too long and while having a cavalcade of creative ideas it's more a Pollock painting than anything that resembles something intelligible. He smashes a trilogy's worth of worldbuilding into one novel and people seem to love it. The problem is that world and the characters just aren't very good.

What a bizarre book! By all accounts it shouldn't be the type of book I'd ever pick up, much less the kind that would keep me engrossed all the way through--but it was, and it did. I tried to explain the plot to a couple of people, and each time I ended up with a confused jumble of themes all wrapped up in a feeble explanation. "It's about... uhh... good vs. evil. And demons, the undead, nightmares that come to life, shamanic magic, a talking ape, and metaphysical horror. Among many other things."

The ironic thing is that by the time I reached the last page, I realized I didn't actually like any of the characters. Even the "good" ones. Howie and Jo Beth's relationship was so forced and sudden that it made me roll my eyes throughout. show more Grillo and Tesla were the two that came closest to being genuinely likeable, yet they fell short as well. Despite that, I still found myself eagerly dragged along by Barker's imagination. I wanted to know what would happen next, and so I went along for the ride. In the end, I'm glad I read it, but I'm not entirely sure I need to read the sequel. show less

To label The Great and Secret Show a horror novel would be to do it a disservice. "Arty horror" would be closer to the mark but that sounds silly and would still be inadequate. “Dark fantasy” sounds good to me though it deemphasizes the horror aspect of it a little too much, may be it is more phantasm than fantasy. Not that labels really matter, a good book is a good book regardless of whatever label you slap on it. I am only going on about it just to have some kind of intro!

To tell you what this book is about is a fairly complicated undertaking (best left to undertakers perhaps). It starts with one Randolph Jaffe’s quest for mastery of “The Art”, not just any old art but a craft or power that has the capability to tear a hole show more in the fabric of reality and create an opening to another dimension called Quiddity. Quiddity is a mystical dream sea, a sea of the mind that most people visit twice in their lives. “Once the first night you slept out of the womb. The second occasion the night you lay beside the person you loved.” That does not make much sense out of the context of the book so just imagine the weirdest goddamn sea you can and then pile on extra weirdness on top. The Quiddity sea changes you and is generally extremely bad for your complexion:

Credit Gabriel Rodríguez Pérez (from graphic novel adaptation)

Jaffe’s pursuit of the Art leads to his eventually becoming something other than human and triggers a possible supernatural apocalypse that threatens all human lives. What starts out as a man’s quest for power becomes a titanic struggle between good and evil where the battles often takes surreal forms.

Randolph Jaffe (AKA The Jaff). Again credit Gabriel Rodríguez Pérez.

That little synopsis barely scratches the surface of the novel’s plot. The Great and Secret Show is a dark fantasy of epic proportions (though “epic fantasy” has an entire different connotation, usually associated with Tolkien’s or George R.R. Martin’s kind of fantasy). With this book is Clive Barker is at the peak of his creativity, here he has created a brand new mythos about the nature of dreams and reality that is mind blowing. The storyline is quite complex but clearly narrated so there is never any problem following it. Fans of bizarre critters should have a field day with this book which is populated by some very bizarre and often disgusting creatures. For example you know how low budget horror movies from the 80s often feature shitty monsters? This book literally has shitty monsters made from actual fecal matter! There are also various other bizarre creatures made from fear and others made from dreams that I can not even begin to describe.

The book is full of horrific moments, surreal dream-like moments and even comical moments and romantic bits. I would not recommend it to anyone who is easily offended though. If you avert your eyes at Game of Thrones’ most outrageous scenes then leave The Great and Secret Show on the shelf. Barker's prose style is hard to pin down, sometime he takes flight into lyricism, other times he dives into the language of the gutter (he certainly seems to use the “C word” a lot). The multiple protagonists are all well drawn. The most memorable one being the evil Randolph Jaffe (AKA The Jaff) and the kickass heroine Tesla. I am quite impressed by how quickly Barker can introduce and develop characters that are vivid and believable, in a few pages within a single chapter mostly through dialog.

At the end of the day I can whole heartedly recommend The Great and Secret Show to anyone looking for a fantastical – or perhaps phantasmagorical – read. You won’t be disappointed (if you are, you shouldn’t be!). show less

Extremely disappointing. All of Clive Barker's usual themes are certainly present: nonjudgmental eroticism, visceral body-horror, religious revelation; but they are in service of a sloppily assembled and meandering storyline. His [b: Books of Blood|761023|Books of Blood Volume One (Books of Blood #1)|Clive Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1429999423s/761023.jpg|1249260] delivered these themes with a breathtaking mastery, [b: The Hellbound Heart|52635|The Hellbound Heart|Clive Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327312426s/52635.jpg|1093522] and its movie adaptation can at least commit to a brutally Sadeian purpose. The are some excellent ideas and some genuinely demented images in The Great and Secret Show, but the way show more it flails around is frustrating. I spent all this time committing to a door-stopper epic, only to learn too late that maybe I should've tried [b: Imajica|567704|Imajica|Clive Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1333844729s/567704.jpg|1371342] or [b: Weaveworld|52640|Weaveworld|Clive Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1329374451s/52640.jpg|942564] instead. show less

I wish I read a different Clive barker book, you can see the talent but this book is so bloated that by the end of it I didn’t give a fuck what happened to any of the characters.

I should have known from the beginning, with my general distaste for fictional conspiracy theories, that I would throw this book across the room in frustration before too long. As usual, I finished the whole thing despite the intense eye-rolling it engendered. I prefer characters that seem more human than godlike wannabes.