The Great and Secret Show (Clive Barker, 1989)

There’s something about Clive Barker in that something as flawed and over-written as The Great and Secret Show can still captivate me despite being overly long. The basic premise of two warring men (The Jaff and The Man Fletcher respectively) fighting over The Art, a power that can lead to the sea of Quiddity, the nexus of everything, is filled with Barker’s twisted yet limitless imagination and, for the most part, reads like a rip-roaring ride of fantasy mixed with Barker’s own take of the nature of existence (something that features heavily in his later fantasy novels like Weaveworld, Sacrament and Imajica). Yet it’s this endless imagination that is the books ultimate undoing in that, in being unable to contain himself, Barker has fashioned a narrative that seldom knows when to stop indulging.

That’s not to say The Great and Secret Show is bad, just a bit long winded. At nearly 700 pages with text to rival the Lord of the Rings in terms of size, there is much in the latter half of the book the could have been scrapped. Tommy-Ray’s escapades as the Death Boy, whilst interesting, are not needed and do little more than pepper the main narrative with extra garnish. Oddly, the same can be said for the central love story that ultimately fuels the plot but comes as nothing at the end. The main interest lies in secondary characters like Grillo and his female companion Tesla, who drive the latter half of the novel once the shit really hits the fan.

But, whilst being a tad flowery at times, Barker style is at once engaging and holds a certain air of eloquence that makes the remarkable seem as such and the grotesque something to admire. The Jaff’s main weapon is to fashion monsters by exploiting people’s fear and bleeding them out through the victim’s pours. Not as nasty as Weaveworld’s decaying witch that spits out deformed foetuses, yet is far more disturbing.

I like The Great and Secret Show very much, despite its indulgent nature. It’s brimming to the surface with ideas and would be a classic of the fantasy genre if only it kept such ideas in check. I’m hoping its sequel, the 1996 novel Everville, will do just this.

4/5