”These letters had been sent from coast to coast looking for someone to open them, and had found no takers. Finally they’d ended with him: with Randolph Erniest Jaffe, a balding nobody with ambitions never spoken and rage not expressed, whose little knife slit them, and little eyes scanned them, and who--sitting at his crossroads--began to see the private face of the nation.

There were love-letters, hate-letters, ransom notes, pleadings, sheets on which men had drawn round their hard-ons, valentines of pubic hair, blackmail from wives, journalists, hustlers, lawyer and senators, junk-mail and suicide notes, lost novels, chain letters, resumes, undelivered gifts, rejected gifts, letters sent out in the wilderness like bottles from an island.”

Randolph Jaffe is given the dead letter office job because it is considered one of the worst jobs available in the postal service. Jaffe is odd, and needless to say, when someone is odd in our society, people just can’t let them be. His co-workers really don’t like him. His boss loves to make fun of him. This is before social media became the best tool of bullies, but it is amazing the lengths that adults will go to still pick at people they find to be inexplicably unusual, as if they are still walking the hallways of the sixth grade. Naturally, Jaffe is a festering, vibrating, mass of unexploded rage. The dead letter office job gives him some relief from people and puts him on the trail of something hidden from the rest of the world in these lost letters, a true source of limitless power that will give him the means to go postal on the biggest scale imaginable.

He discovers a whole ‘nother world.

The clues lead Jaffe to New Mexico where he encounters a shoal, a sort of oracle for this other world. He learns of the ”mystical dream sea Quiddity and the islands within it known as the Ephemeris. Quiddity, as it turns out, is visible exactly three times to an ordinary human: The first time we ever sleep outside our mother's womb, the first time we sleep beside the one we truly love and the last time we ever sleep before we die.”

Jaffe then hires the brilliant, or at least brilliantly stoned, Richard Wesley Fletcher, who believes that what Jaffe knows is true and thinks he can make an elixir that will allow a human to evolve to the point that they can reach Quiddity. In other words, why don’t we change the natural order of things to see what happens.

Things get strange.

Then things really get wiggy.

Fletcher realizes Jaffe’s evil intentions, which sets off an epic battle between the two of them, which is one long standoff of competing energies. They even spawn offspring when four young ladies decide to go skinny dipping above. Little did they know what is rippling in the water beneath them. Yes, ladies, you can get pregnant by some hellish entity just going for a swim. If that isn’t enough to put you off swimming in deep waters see Jaws. Fletcher and Jaffe know the battle will go beyond their life spans, and their hope is that their offspring will continue to wage the war for them.

Whenever you start to feel a bit confused with this convoluted and brilliantly conceived plot, keep the following line in mind: ”Reason could be cruel; logic could be lunacy.”

There are a whole host of characters who get drawn into this battle between Fletcher and Jaffe. Their children are caught up in these events, whether they want to be or not. As the bonds start to break between this other world and what is considered the real world, numerous personalities, from reporters to movie stars to average Joes, are enlisted in this struggle to keep this other world from eating our world. This schism between worlds must be repaired; a finger must be put in the dyke, and above all, Quiddity must be preserved. It reminds me of that great line from Dune...The Spice Must Flow!

Needless to say, this plot is massive, and I could spend trillions of pixels trying to explain the complexities, but if you are planning to read this, you may only be confused by my fumblings to explicate it. Clive Barker said this was the most difficult book he ever wrote, and I believe him. This is definitely his attempt to write a fantasy/horror masterpiece, and he very well may have succeeded. The writing isn’t as difficult to follow as some reviewers will tell you, but I do suggest that you stay with it. A long absence between reading jags could create more frustration for you.

Palomo Grove, California, is ground zero for this Armageddon, and there is no better person to show up to investigate than Harry D’Amour, the occult private investigator. He only appears in the final pages of the book, but believe me, the unlikely heroes of this story could have used his help from the very beginning. I first met Harry in the short story The Last Illusion from Barker’s rather brilliant collection of stories Cabal. See my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Harry D’Amour was played by Scott Bakula in the film version, called The Lord of Illusions (1995), which I recently found streaming on my new favorite source for strange and forgotten movies, tubitv.com. Unfortunately the streaming version available is the theatrical cut which according to my research left plot holes the size of Mac Trucks so I decided to buy a cheap DVD copy, thank you eBay, of the director’s cut. I gotta say I thought the film was great. Famke Janssen was lovely and reminded me of a young Julia Roberts. Kevin J. O’Connor was terrific, most of you might remember him from The Mummy. J. Trevor Edmund nearly stole the show with his androgynous languor. Sheila Tousey was an unexpected surprise. I still have a crush on her from her role in Thunderheart. I decided I better line up my ducks on Harry D’Amour because he will have a major role in Everville, which is the sequel to The Great and Secret Show.

I don’t know how this has happened, but I have now been sucked into the world of Clive Barker. Okay, I know how it happens. When a reader searches the mystical corners of the literary world he can sometimes find himself caught up in some nefarious reading experiences. Barker’s world resembles the sea of Quiddity, and the more time I spend there, the more warped mentally and bodily deformed I become. I do eventually recover, but one must pace oneself.

This is a sprawling, ambitious, imaginative work that will put your mind through some mental gymnastics, but as the pieces fall into place and you start to understand your way around a bit, you will find the reading experience highly rewarding. The more I read of Clive Barker the more I respect what he is trying to accomplish. A reader can’t just dip her toe into the water and decide if his works are too hot or too cold or just right for her. You must immerse yourself and let Barker unsnap the constrictions on your mind and allow your thoughts to roam free as he influences what you believe to be real and what you could believe to be real.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/
Reviewed on Goodreads.com

Ο Μπάρκερ δημοσιεύοντας αυτό το βιβλίο έριξε (ακόμη μία φορά) τους αναγνώστες τους σε έναν ψυχεδελικό κόσμο. Η πλοκή του είναι σχετικά γρήγορη, ενώ μπαίνει κατευθείαν στο ψητό από την πρώτη σελίδα.
Μέχρι την μέση, η πλοκή είναι σταθερή, το θέμα του συγκεκριμένο και ακολουθούμε συγκεκριμένους ήρωες.
Από την μέση και μετά όμως γίνεται ένας μικρός χαμός, μπαίνουν πολλοί ήρωες στο παιχνίδι, οι περιπέτειες που ακολουθούμε πολλές (βέβαια όλες συνδέονται μεταξύ τους) και η αφήγηση γίνεται λίγο «κατάπια έκσταση και πάω σε ρέιβ πάρτυ».
Ναι, μου άρεσε όλο αυτό το σκηνικό, αν και τα ψιλοέχασα σε αρκετά σημεία. Ίσως μετά απο ένα μπουκάλι βόλτα να το κατανοούσα λίγο πιο εύκολα.
Το χάρηκα και το απόλαυσα, αν και ο Μπάρκερ δεν είναι για όλες τις ώρες, είναι πολύ ιδιαίτερος, ψιλοπαραμυθένιος, ψιλοτρελαμένος αλλά πολύ πολύ αγαπημένος!

Reviewed on Goodreads.com

How can I best describe The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker, well if you imagine the start being at one end of a swimming pool, and the swimming pool is filled with jelly (or jello to some) made from a cocktail of your favourite alcoholic spirits and liqueurs.
 
And to reach the end you've got to wade through this Olympic sized jelly filled swimming pool, right, so chances are you're going to enjoy a fair portion of it before you get full anyway. There's going to be some enjoyment, mixed in with some fucking hard work, there's going to be intense appreciation of the idea but it's not something you can possibly do in one go, it might take you weeks and you may even decide to eat your way through it, taking even longer. You’ll grow tired, weak even, your arms will ache but you’ll soldier on even though you think it’s just not bloody worth it.
 
There'll be all kinds of feelings going through your mind, a myriad of emotions, like why the Fuck did I start this massive fucking job now. Jesus fucking wept you will swear several times and hover over diving in again until you desperately need to just get it over with, as if your life depends on it.
 
So to recap it's going to be hard going, you'll love some of it, you'll get pissed at some of it, you'll feel like taking a break at regular intervals and you might even question your will to finish the job, even your sanity but if you do finish, it will certainly hold some sort of reward and a sense of achievement will prevail.
 

Anyway apologies for that rubbish
but that's how I felt at times, I started this book in November and it’s taken me six weeks to read and I'm fucking glad it's over with. It's unquestionably genius, the writing is imaginative with wonderful prose, it's a great story but it labours horrifically, I loved it while at the same time I hated it and I'll never, ever think to pick it up again, in fact I'm going to cremate this fucker. Now I have a few other Barker tomes awaiting Imajica, Coldheart Canyon and Weaveworld, will I read them anytime soon? Only when I want to wade through jelly again. Nuff said.
 
A 3.5* rating

Also posted at http://paulnelson.booklikes.com/post/...
Reviewed on Goodreads.com

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 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!).
Reviewed on Goodreads.com

Even better the second time around. If I could rate it higher, I would. Of course, I believe this is essential reading for horror/dark fantasy fans. I will be revisiting the sequel, Everville, next.
Reviewed on Goodreads.com