A gorgeous, sensuous dream of a novel that is, not surprisingly, about the stuff of dreams. Barker's signature wild mix of fantasy, sex and horror is on full display in this apocalyptic story as is his richly evocative prose. I lost myself in this story for hours on end and even ignored my dog's feeding time twice (sorry, Jake!). This is the kind of virtuoso performance I have come to expect from Barker (and what I expected, and didn't get, from The Scarlet Gospels). 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:

In 1989, Clive Barker published the first book in what would become popularly known as ‘The Art Trilogy’: The Great and Secret Show. The trilogy is unfinished. The second book, Everville, was published in 1994 and delves even deeper into the lore and mythos of Quiddity and the Art. The third book is, according to a 2014 Facebook post, in the works, but it’s going to be “a big book” and Barker has a lot on his plate. In an exercise to get in touch with my deceased teenage self, I decided to read one of the books that really got me into reading and, incidentally, writing. Having noted already that as the palate of age matures, the enjoyment of things past lessens, I wanted the familiar nostalgia of a book from my shelf that had my old, perhaps slightly smaller, fingerprints. Jo-Beth McGuire: She has always had an abnormally close relationship with her twin-brother, Tommy-Ray, but her love for Howie changes that, causing conflict and jealousy. Although Jaffe is the surrogate father of the siblings, she comes around to Fletcher’s and Howie’s side in the battle over the Art. Barker is one of the leading authors of contemporary horror/fantasy, writing in the horror genre early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories (collected in Books of Blood 1 – 6), and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game (1985). Later he moved towards modern-day fantasy and urban fantasy with horror elements in Weaveworld (1987), The Great and Secret Show (1989), the world-spanning Imajica (1991) and Sacrament (1996), bringing in the deeper, richer concepts of reality, the nature of the mind and dreams, and the power of words and memories. Having said that, Chet Williamson has a rather monotone and sonore voice and does not differentiate much betwwn characters. He did not succeed in drawing me in.Memory, prophecy and fantasy; the past, the future, and the dreaming moment between are all one country living one immortal day. To know that is Wisdom. To use it is the Art.

Barker is a prolific visual artist working in a variety of media, often illustrating his own books. His paintings have been seen first on the covers of his official fan club magazine, Dread, published by Fantaco in the early Nineties, as well on the covers of the collections of his plays, Incarnations (1995) and Forms of Heaven (1996), as well as on the second printing of the original UK publications of his Books of Blood series.Howard Katz: After his mother Trudi dies in Chicago, he decides to go to Palamo Grove to discover the mysteries of his birth. There, he meets Jo-Beth and immediately falls in love with her. Because their surrogate fathers are enemies, their relationship is problematic. In 2003, Clive Barker received The Davidson/Valentini Award at the 15th GLAAD Media Awards. This award is presented "to an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or tran Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School, he studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University and his picture now hangs in the entrance hallway to the Philosophy Department. It was in Liverpool in 1975 that he met his first partner, John Gregson, with whom he lived until 1986. Barker's second long-term relationship, with photographer David Armstrong, ended in 2009. Well I've news for you, I didn't particularly like this book; this is the kind of book that throws me into a slump. Armageddon begins with a murder in the Dead Letter Office in Omaha. A lake that has never existed falls from the clouds over Palomo Grove, CA. Young passion blossoms, as the world withers with war. The Great and Secret Show has begun on the stage of the world. Soon the final curtain must fall.