Sacrament
by Clive Barker
A boy has an
encounter with a man who causes extinctions of other species, so
he grows up to be a man who documents (and thus appeals for a halt
to) those extinctions. This dark fantasy tale is unlike Clive
Barker's other recent ones: it is more tightly plotted, and more
of this world. In a sequence of well-executed stories
within stories (comparable to Russian dolls), Barker unfolds a
compelling examination of what it means to be human, to be a man,
and to be a gay man--on a planet where aging, disease, and death
bring "the passing of things, of days and beasts and men he'd
loved." A satisfying long novel packed with vivid images,
memorable characters, and a melancholy mood that reaches for hope.
Burned-out
wildlife photographer Will Rabjohns, famous for grim pictures of
just-dead animals, is mauled by a polar bear near Hudson Bay and
falls into a coma. While he is unconscious, strange incidents from
his childhood in Yorkshire, England, vividly recur to him. He had
encountered an oddly compelling man and woman in a ruin outside
his village, a couple soon guilty of gruesome murders and about
whom Will is suspected of knowing more than he told; during his
meetings with the pair, Will bonded with the man and, far weirder,
with a talking fox he saw in a vision. When he revives, Will
returns to his adult home in San Francisco's gay Castro district.
He plans to assemble a final book of photos and then . . . he
doesn't know what. But the fox reappears and finally melds with
him, freaking out an old love with whom Will's trying to
reconnect. Then a brutal attack on his father calls him back to
the scenes of his boyhood and, in a climax beautifully set on a
Hebridean island, to a showdown with the mysterious couple. Barker
restrains the gore-splattering of much of his work in fiction and
film to produce an adult cousin to his children's fantasy, The
Thief of Always (1992). Its message may be that when a man
sets out to save his soul, he may indeed save the world as well.
It deserves to be as big a hit as anything Barker's done; may the
fact that its hero is gay not turn off too many of the fans. -- Ray
Olson
