I originally read this book when it was a brand new release and I was fourteen. I remember buying it with my allowance at the local drugstore. I'm betting most of it went over my head at the time but I have fond memories of scaring people away from speaking to me when reading this. I'm curious how I'll feel about it now that I'm no longer a tormented teen looking to hide from reality.

The Book of Blood
After recently seeing the movie adaptation of this short story, which was dreary, sexualized and not too bad even with some cliches thrown in, I was impelled to revisit this novel to see how the film matched up. Much was changed, of course. This “Book of Blood” is actually the introduction to all of the stories that follow it. The movie stands alone and is quite a bit different.

The dead have highways and at one of these intersections sits the house at 65 Tollington Place. It looks like any other home but stay there too long and you’re sure to leave much different than when you arrived. A trio of paranormal investigators are successfully documenting the goings-on of the place but more is going on than meets the eye. The young medium that secretly lusts for fame and fortune and will do whatever must be done to acquire it is keeping secrets. Secrets that are enraging the dead. His beatific smile easily wins over Mary Florescu whose life’s work has been documenting paranormal events. She should know better but is overcome with desire and is blind until it’s too late and the dead have their way with him. Now he’s no longer beautiful and she must translate the stories the dead have written upon his skin. No one does dread and dank atmosphere like Clive Barker.

The Midnight Meat Train Kaufman once adored the idea of New York until he lived there and saw the ugliness up close. Now New York is just another city and has lost its allure. A brutal string of murders in the subway system further sickens him in this city whose streets are awash with fresh blood.

A man thinking himself a night-stalker and taking his job seriously preys the underground in search of a body whose flesh is worthy of his skill.

Kaufman will discover he knew little of the true atrocities carried out in the city until he rides the subway one dark, lonely night . . . This story is gory, gritty and gives you something to think about.

The Yattering and Jack This story was made into a super cheesy "Tales from the Darkside" episode. I watched it recently on the Chiller channel and am curious to see just how much they ruined the original story.

This is a surprisingly "lighter" and slightly humorous story from Barker. The Yattering is a lower level demon ousted from Hell to torment a human named Jack Polo. He doesn't know why and is thoroughly frustrated with his inability to drive the boring human into a raving lunatic. No matter how desperately the Yattering tries to upset Polo he remains unmoved. When Polo's daughters come for a visit the Yattering ratchets up his fright-fest. There's a funny scene involving the Yattering and his genitals that I didn't see in the televised version, hmmm. . . Needless to say, in the end, Polo isn't as dense as Yattering assumes. This version, of course, was much better than the cheesy Tales from the Darkside episode.

Pig Blood Blues This one is dark and bloody and has the sexual undertones that color much of Barkers work. Redman, a former police officer, has been hired to teach wayward adolescents at a juvenile detention center. He quickly takes pity on a youth named Lacey who is continually the victim of bullying and offers him protection. As he gets to know the boy, he tells him a bizarre tale about the farm on the property involving suicide and a hungry pig. This one is strange and haunting.

Sex, Death and Starshine
Barker never pretties up his dead. Oh sure, they may have a facade of skin over their rotting corpses but you always know what they truly are the moment they enter the story and step out of the shadows. His dead are always putrefying, raw and terrifying but they’re quite often more classy than the living. I believe this is what has always drawn me to his work. This little story is about a theater's last production of Twelfth Night and the drama that ensues behind the scenes. While the temperamental theater folks are busy stabbing each other in the back over silly jealousy and pettiness some major drama is about to happen upon the scene in the form of a creepy stranger and his beautiful wife who wants the starring role.

This wasn’t one of the best stories in the book but it highlights Barker’s love for his dead and his knack for embodying them with a dark grace. The humans come off as vulgar and petty and lacking in morals while the dead are much more refined even though they’re decaying corpses.

In The Hills, The Cities
Mick doesn’t discover that his lover is an obnoxious political bigot until he’s stuck with him on a trip to Yugoslavia and nearly bored to death by his tedious opinions. While Judd thinks Mick is an airhead who is content to keep his head in the clouds. It was supposed to be their honeymoon but apparently they should have spent some time together before embarking on their trip. The only thing they have going for them is attraction.

But in the hills hides the greatest wonder of the world. Within the hills its citizens are preparing an ancient ceremonial battle that pits city against city. Mick and Judd who are busy bickering and traversing these endless roads haplessly stumble upon something they were never meant to see. And of course they can’t look away when they should . . .

This was a very original short story, unlike anything I've read before or since, but considering what happens Barker doesn't stay focused on the gore as he easily could have but more on the reactions of the two who witness this bizarre event.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Traded in to the used bookstore today with a bunch of others that I no longer had room to store. It will be half price if you're interested in purchasing it and will be somewhere in the stacks. It's a great little store with friendly people so check it out if you're in the area.

If you've found it Welcome to Bookcrossing! I hope you enjoy it and thanks for making a journal entry. When you are finished reading it please click "new journal entry" again and add any comments you'd like to share. If you decide to keep it that's fine by me, if you decide pass it along, please click "release book" so we can both follow its journey. You can leave it wherever you choose. I have decent luck leaving my books on top of drive-by mail boxes (with the flat tops), on benches, in lobbies and at gas pumps but I also pass many on to fellow readers. If you'd like to join bookcrossing I'd be thrilled if you'd use my BC name, BarkLessWagMore, as the referring member.

Wahoo! Found one!

I saw the release alerts, and as I often shop at Annie's anyway I thought I'd swing by and see if I could spot any of them. I've read some Barker, but not this particular collection, so I was glad to find this one!

From the gruesomely punny opening ("Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red"), I enjoyed this book very much, for different values of "enjoyed" - charmed, spooked, grossed out, creeped out, all of the above!

"The Book of Blood" was almost tame - well, not "tame" exactly, but so lyrical that it felt that way compared to some of the other stories. I haven't seen the film version, but may look it up.

"The Yattering and Jack" was both funny and creepy; Jack's "infuriate the demon" technique had some pretty awful side effects.

I'd seen the 2008 film version of "The Midnight Meat Train, so when I found the story in this collection I knew what to expect. Yes, it's over-the-top gruesome, but it blends real-world fears with the fictional ones (which included hints of Lovecraft, to my delight) very deftly.

I found "Pig Blood Blues" just heartbreaking, despite the fact that its inclusion in this anthology was more than enough warning of what was likely to happen!

"Sex, Death and Starshine" was perhaps my favorite story here - more of a classic haunting/the-dead-return tale than the others, and of course my sympathies were firmly on the side of the attempt to stage "Twelfth Night" properly, even if this did require quite a bit of collateral damage...

I'd read "In the Hills, the Cities" before in a different collection, and had found it memorable and appalling - appalling in its horrific imagery. It starts out sweetly enough; a gay couple is driving through the Yugoslavian countryside, bickering at first and then pausing to make love in a wheat field (how very artistic, I thought, if scratchy {grin}). But, in an alternate story thread, two cities are - well, coming together, literally: in some deftly sketched passages we learn that the entire populations of each town are climbing onto each other's shoulders, wrapping around each other's limbs, to form colossal humanoid shapes - that can walk... I don't know where he gets his ideas, but this one was so startling and so visual that I haven't been able to get it out of my head. {shudder...}

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I left this book in the newspapers-for-customers rack at the back of Christopher's Subs at about 2; hope the finder enjoys it!


*** Released as part of Jare's 2010 Chills & Spills Release Challenge; the theme for February is zombies, and one of the stories definitely features those, with other animated dead appearing as well. Also part of msrubble's 2010 Movie Books Release Challenge ***