The Great and Secret Show - Softcover

Barker, Clive

4.06

30,536 ratings by Goodreads

9780061099014: The Great and Secret Show

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061099015 ISBN 13: 9780061099014

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1990

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When postal clerk Randolph Jaffe stumbles across a dead letter room full of revelations about a secret and awesome power known as the Art, he finds himself entangled in a battle between good and evil in a quiet California town

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About the Author:

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, in 1952. In addition to his work as a novelist and short story writer, he is also a painter, filmmaker, and playwright. He is the author of numerous worldwide bestsellers, including The Books of Blood, The Damnation Game, Weaveworld, The Great and Secret Show, Imajica, Everville, and Sacrament. Two collections of his plays, Incarnations and Forms of Heaven, were recently published by HarperPrism. The films he has written, produced, or directed include the Hellraiser series, the Candyman pictures, Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions, Gods and Monsters and the forthcoming The Thief of Always. He lives with his lover, friends, and dogs in Los Angeles.

Review:

"A hefty and ambitious epic that emphasizes the ideas over gore with provocative and apocalyptic vision. [A] boundless and detailed imagination...dazzling skill." -- Seattle Post Intelligencer

"At his best, he is a mapmaker of the mind, charting the farthest reaches of the imagination. His Great and Secret Show is, in fact, the world inside our heads: the place of possibilities., some dark and dangerous, others bright and beautiful, and some of them liberating." -- -- The Washington Times

"Barker has constructed an entire new mythology here...and in the language of fear, he has no equals."( Time Out (London)) -- Time Out, London

"Barker's most ambitious work to date...Rapturously full of emotions." -- -- L.A. Life

"Clive Barker's career has been building up to The Great and Secret Show...A cross between Gravity's Rainbow and J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, allusive and mythic, complex and entertaining. Extravagantly metaphorical, wildly symbolic." -- -- New York Times

"Mesmerizing invention." -- -- Publishers Weekly

"Mixing elements of horror, science fiction and surrealist literature, Barker's work reads like a cross between Stephen King and South American novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He creates a world where our biggest fears appear to be our own dreams." -- -- The Boston Herald

"Mr. Barker works foremost from a deep love of [horror's] art and fiction, the legitimate heir of the visionary school from William Blake to Carl A. Smith. The intent of Mr. Barker's fiction is not to horrify (although that effect is inevitable) but to force the reader to imagine. He is not so much a writer of horror as a writer of the fantastic, fueled by Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King but fired by Hieronymus Bosch and Fracisco Goya. [Clive Barker] is a mapmaker of the mind, charting the farthest reaches of the imagination. His Great and Secret Show is, in fact, the world inside our heads; the place of possibilities, some dark and dangerous, others bright and beautiful, and some of them liberating. The Great and Secret Show fulfills Mr. Barkers potential as novelist. His ambition and audacity are unparalleled; we know that we are in the presence of a vision that is genuine, unique and lasting." -- Douglas Winter, Washington Times

"Rich and absorbing...the images are vivid, the asides incisive and the prose elegant in this joyride of a story." -- Time

"Spellbinding." -- -- Atlanta Journal

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