The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker - Book Review


The Great and Secret Show

The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker - Book Review

The theme here is duality. We start off with a bored mailman working in the mail sorting room in Nebraska. This man’s name is Jaffe. By sorting through the dead letters of America, he stumbles upon something referred to as “The Art”. 

After he leaves the mailroom, he goes out into the desert and meets a mystical hermit who tells him about “Quiddity”, which is a super form of existence in a dream state. It is a confusing concept. Jaffee then hires a scientist to make a serum that will allow him to reach Quiddity, but the scientist fears Jaffee’s evilness and, instead, destroys his lab. 

In the end, Jaffee and the scientist are exposed to the substance and turn into spirits, flying around in the sky battling each other for a year, before falling into a lake in California.  

They then meet some girls and decide to rape them, eventually giving birth to their babies. Eighteen years later when the kids are grown, the two spirits of good and evil are still fighting.


Book Details

Title: The Great and Secret Show
Format: Paperback
Author: Clive Barker
Language : English
Publisher : Harper Perennial
ISBN: 006093316X

This book is bonkers. The ideas make no sense and all the nonsense about a dream state and spirits is dumb. In any case, the book could have been cut in half. It goes on for so long that it hurts to read. 

Filled with pointless and poorly written dialogue, “The Great and Secret Show” is more of a chore than anything. The story goes on with the two opposing forces children fighting and buckets upon buckets of silly terms and just overall silliness. 

The end is not satisfactory, and even the special cameo fails. I really didn’t enjoy it. 4/10 is the maximum I could give this book.


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Updated 3 years ago