Books of Blood, Vols. 1-3
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- Publication Date: 1984 (Individual Volumes)
1998 (Collected Edition) - Written by: Clive Barker
- Page count: 507
This book is extremely important for me for one big reason: it was my introduction to my favorite author of all time, Clive Barker. Being a big horror fan, I had heard his name for years from things like Candyman and Hellraiser, but it took me until my final year of college to actually read some of his work. While at a bookstore in the mall, I found copies of Books of Blood, Vols. 1-3 and The Hellbound Heart for cheap. Knowing their reputation, I picked them up and decided to give them a read. After finishing them, I quickly made it a point to get my hands on every book that had his name on it.
Books of Blood is a series of six short story anthology collections, and was Barker's first published works of fiction. The framing story that connects all the others concerns a man who poses as a medium and fakes being able to talk to the dead. During a seance one night, the ghosts are displeased with his fakery, and they decide to show him that what they went through was very real. Untold amounts of spirits then carve their stories into the flesh of his body, every single inch, using his blood and flesh to turn him into a living "book of blood." What we read in the following volumes are the stories that literally written into his skin.
The thing about Barker's writing that captured me so quickly was his ability to paint pictures with words. There's something about his prose that is so elegant and refined, yet able to paint some of the most gruesome and disturbing images thought up in horror fiction. I like to imagine him telling these stories dressed as a refined English gentleman, but reading out of a book made from flesh with a glass of blood on the side. Take for example, this passage from Pig Blood Blues:
"Below him, the sow and the boy had come to a halt, beneath his jangling feet. The boy, still grunting, had climbed off the pig and was squatting down beside the beast. Through the graying air Redman could see the curve of the boy's spine, the flawless skin of his back. He saw too the knotted rope that protruded from between his pale buttocks, the end frayed. For all the world like the tail of a pig.
The sow put its head up, though its eyes were beyond seeing. He liked to think that she suffered, and would suffer now until she died. It was almost sufficient, to think of that. Then the sow's mouth opened, and she spoke. He wasn't certain how the words came, but they came. A boy's voice, lilting.
'This is the state of the beast,' it said, 'to eat and be eaten.'
Then the sow smiled, and Redman felt, though he had believed himself numb, the first shock of pain as Lacey's teeth bit off a piece from his foot, and the boy clambered, snorting, up his saviour's body to kiss out his life."
Fucking unbelievable! What an image, and what a way with words. It's little flairs like "kiss out his life" that pop up all over these stories that make them so satisfying to read.
The amount of imagination in these stories is unreal and unlike anything I had read at the time. One story is about humans lashing themselves together to make literal giants who fight to the death. Another features a murderer whose ghost is trapped behind a movie screen and can manipulate reality using film images. Another involves a man whose spirit leaves his body and inhabits the shroud covering his corpse, creating a living sheet ghost who seeks revenge. There are even a couple of stories with a darkly comedic tone, like The Yattering and Jack, which hilariously portrays a poltergeist who is frustrated because he can't scare the man whose house he is haunting. There are so many treasures to discover here, and I don't want to give them all away. Going into this collection blind will either get you immediately hooked, or make you put it down in disgust.
Books of Blood, Vols. 1-3 is a fantastic introduction to the writing of Clive Barker. It made me an instant fan, and it's my go-to when I have the chance to recommend him to people. This collection only covers half of the series, though. There are so many more oddities waiting to be uncovered in Vols. 4-6.