Clive Barker, born in Liverpool, England, in 1952 now makes his home in Los Angeles, where, in addition to his work as a novelist, short-story writer, and writer of children's stories, he also works as a painter and filmmaker. He is the author of international bestsellers, including "The Books of Blood," "The Damnation Game," "Imajica," and my personal favorite, "Sacrament."
When asked how "Galilee" differs from his other works, Barker stated that the most obvious difference is that it is written in the first person. He says, "It is not a horror book or even a fantasy book. Like "Sacrament," it is a real world book with tinges of the fantastic. I want it to walk the line between the real and the slightly unreal in a way that makes you believe the slightly unreal. It's not a book of fantastic events, fantastic powers or magical transformations. It's a book
about the world we live in but taken slightly at a tilt. Hopefully readers will buy into these locations and characters as real places and real people and be drawn into a different vision of what reality is."
If any other author had made those statements, I would with tongue in cheek have said, "sure, and cows have wings, and Greek gods live in today's world." Barker, however, has a way of delivering what he promises.
"Galilee" spins a frightful, erotic tale of two affluent but very different American families and the dark forces that surround them. As with all his stories Barker also explores deeper truths. He touches on the civil war, religion (in its grandest and most ancient sense), and the secrets that large, rich families in this country have. Some of the behaviors are horrifying and shameful.
Rachel Pallenberg never dreamed that she would find herself married to Mitchell Geary, the most eligible bachelor in America. The Gearys are as wealthy as the Rockefellers and as glamorous as the Kennedys, and have been a powerful American presence since the Civil War. But behind this facade the family hides some dark and sinister secrets. As Rachel begins to unravel them her life becomes stranger than fiction and more frightful than reality.
The Gearys are at war with the Barbarossas a clan whose origins lie shrouded in myth and mystery and whose far-reaching influences are felt not in Washington or on Wall Street but in the deep, sensual exchanges of flesh and soul. When Galilee Barbarossa and Rachel unexpectedly fall in love, the hostilities the two families have kept in check for generations finally erupt in all their unholy glory
.
The story of Rachel and Galilee is told through the eyes of Galilee's half-brother, Maddox. Granted the power to see events as they happen by the Barbarossa matriarch, Maddox sets out to chronicle the true history of his family and their strange link to generations of Gearys.
The narrator's musings as a writer recording family secrets allow the reader insight into the writing mind of Barker himself. As the images of the eerie Barbarossas are revealed, and you begin to understand these people are in this world, but not from it, your mind reels with revelations too fantastic to comprehend, yet, somehow, someway, Barker walks you through the tale and allows you to suspend your disbelief. This is imaginative fiction in the tradition of Blake,
Swift, or Poe.
Barker believes, and I concur, that his books become bestsellers because although they contain extremely strange or outlandish ideas they also contain an element of truth about the way we are as human beings. We might not want to admit those truths to an analyst or a life-partner but we know what those feelings are. This is not a book for the easily shocked.
I believe "Galilee" is Clive Barker's darkest and most sophisticated novel to date. Fans of Barker will be thrilled to know the story is far from over. Much ground is laid for future exploration and we must wait for a fuller explanation of the true spiritual significance of the Barbarossa clan, and for its place in the complex pattern of American life.
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(Jones is a published writer & literary critic)
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