The horror genre in literature has lost steam in recent decades, at least in terms of authors dedicated to the cause of horrifying us exclusively on paper. So Clive Barker appears as one of the last great props of the genre. Do not confuse with JD Barker, another interesting author but more focused on suspense than pure terror.
The taste for reading in the key of terror not that it has disappeared. It is a transmutation of stories into aspects complemented with thrillers or black plots that import the necessary doses of horror, of the ominous human being.
And so the eighties mechanics that brought the horror novels of Stephen King seems exhausted as a formula. Independent scripts are the ones that continue to feed the gorest stories on the big screen (because yes, at the cinema level, terror never dies).
But someone had to be in charge of keeping the inheritance of Edgar Allan Poe. Some writer (beyond Barker also dedicating himself to cinema, video games or comics) had to continue thinking first of a story as a simple story or novel with which to terrorize readers. And that, without a doubt, is Clive Barker.
Clive Barker's Top 3 Recommended Novels
Hellraiser
The disfigurement of the human is a kind of reiteration of the Dorian Gray icon posed by a Oscar Wilde Also connoisseur of the creepiest mazes.
It is clear, nothing to do between Hellraiser and Dorian Gray in terms of plot. But analyzing the comparison we always skirt the hells of the human, where from guilt, fear and worst feelings rewarm the conscience to end up awakening obvious monsters like hellraiser in front of other more occasional like Mr Hyde or the allegorical Dorian Gray. The breakdown of human balance ends up awakening infernal aspects that Dante himself is well known. So, you see, I have further substantiated the nature of this demonic being called hellraiser.
And knowing what all this fear in literature is about, it sure scares you even more. Because, deep down, your soul is in it… You can find a new revised edition down here.
Cabal
We mentioned before glancing at Mr. Hyde, that being that symbolizes the duality of the human being, the double aspect, light and darkness, in force even in the apparently most philanthropic personality.
Aaron Boone kills, he believes he does it in dreams, simply in them. But the reality is that Aaron takes very good care of disassociating his mind from him in order to survive. Until perhaps the perverse side ends up overcoming what little good human remains in him. Because the gruesome discovery of his criminal side drives Aaron Boone to despair.
Like a man who indulges in alcohol or locks himself home in fear of himself, Aaron leads himself underground, over the bodies of others buried that seem to form the dome for the monsters of Midian. On his sinister journey of insanity and doom, Aaron Boone is followed by his girlfriend Lori. And perhaps when all is lost, when Boone has surrendered to the shadows without remission, he may know that he was deceived, that someone occupied his dreams to make him believe that he was the murderer without being one.
Blood books
Barker was hardened in a world of the horror tale that proliferated a lot in the 80s, very given to this type of brief stories about the ominous. Perhaps as an inheritance from Hitchcock ..., the point is that Barker was one of those who most entered the new field of the dark story combined with all kinds of explicit aspects in the sexual or the violent.
In this recent volume and in others that complement almost all the short story production of the first Barker, we find fear on all fronts. Unhealthy psychopaths, extreme desires, hatreds capable of anything ... but also introductions into dark and fantastic worlds and connections with other terrifying dimensions. Blood, guts, horrors from here and there that always force you to look under the bed or go through the hallway of your house sticking your back to the wall.
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