The Gearys and the Barbarossas are linked through years of conflict, love, revenge, tragedy, and deceit. Galilee is the story of two families, the Gearys (take two parts Kennedy and mix with one part Hurst) and the Barbarossas (pull a random assortment of gods from Greek, Roman, Norse, and middle-eastern myth, plant them in the here and now, and you’re getting close to understanding them). It’s a shame I didn’t go back sooner, because looking at it now, it’s pretty clear to me that it’s Barker’s best novel. My thoughts on the book were stubbornly linked to that night when I was 16, when I opened the book expecting the fantastic and encountered the mundane. I flip through one of his collections of short-stories. Still, every few years I go back and re-read a little Barker. In other words, my tastes developed past the sort of visceral thrills we seek out as teenagers.
Here were writers who could thrill me every bit as much as Barker had done, but they could also reach me with beautiful language and interesting stylistic choices. Slowly, I found my way to (deservedly) lauded writers like Hemingway and Faulkner, to contemporary writers like Tim O’Brien and Margaret Atwood. I transitioned away from fantasy and horror. Through the course of those years, I realized that there are, of course, many better writers than Clive Barker. I put the book down.įast-forward fourteen years. Here was a book that was more concerned with family history than with the fantastical or the horrific. But here was a book that opened with a discussion of Thomas Jefferson’s role in the construction of the narrator’s home. Often, the reader was transported to a strange land with strange creatures. His other novels opened with bursts of magic or violence or sex. Simply put, Galilee wasn’t the kind of book I expected from Barker. That night, I sat down to read what would surely be Barker’s grandest achievement. I bought the hardcover version as soon as I could scrape together enough allowance money. All of that is to say, when Galilee came out in 1998, I was well-versed in Barker’s unique blend of horror and fantasy. My first experience reading short stories for pleasure, rather than as a requirement for an English class, came in the form of Barker’s Books of Blood. I spent three or four months immersed in the thousand page glory of Imagica. Weaveworld and The Great and Secret Show were among my favorite books. When I was 16, I didn’t think there was a better writer than Clive Barker.
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