![]() ![]() ![]() Too late for love the sunlight was already a memory. From "Scapegoats," which evokes the zombie-island nightmares of Italian exploitation film but is laced with an unexpectedly poetic tone:Īnd I, losing my life with every second, succumbing to the sea absolutely, couldn't take pleasure in the intimacy I'd longed for. A large part of Barker's horror philosophy, if we can call it that, was that horror should subvert our (often wrong) notions of normality and beauty. Instead, there is a polite informality, a deft and dry wit in his writing, as if to make the horrors more palatable, the deformities less alien, the grotesqueries a welcome respite from reality. Nothing of Lovecraft or Matheson, either, I daresay. There was little of the neighborly chumminess of Stephen King's work, or the weighty obliquity of Ramsey Campbell's. His style was unique and took a bit of warming up to. I bought it based on the Berkley 1986 edition cover alone, and can still recall sitting in a mall courtyard reading the first story, "Son of Celluloid," and being a tad put off because Barker's measured, careful prose was so very British. 3, which was the first thing I ever read by him way, way back in January 1987. Clive Barker continued his revolutionizing of the horror genre with Books of Blood, Vol. More glorious short-story mayhem from the best. ![]()
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