Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story [Hardcover]

Clive Barker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2001

Hollywood has made a star of Todd Pickett. But time is catching up with him. He doesn't have the perfect looks he had last year. After plastic surgery goes awry, Todd needs somewhere to hide away for a few months while his scars heal.

As Todd settles into a mansion in Coldheart Canyon -- a corner of the city so secret it doesn't even appear on any map -- Tammy Lauper, the president of his fan club, comes to the City of Angels determined to solve the mystery of Todd's disappearance. Her journey will not be an easy one. The closer she gets to Todd the more of Coldheart Canyon's secrets she uncovers: the ghosts of the A-list stars who came to the Canyon for wild parties; Katya Lupi, the cold-hearted, nowforgotten star for whom the Canyon was named, who is alive and exquisite after a hundred years; and, finally, the door in the bowels of Katya's dream palace that reputedly open up to another world, the Devil's Country. No one who has ever ventured to this dark, barbaric corner of hell has returned without their souls shadowed by what they'd seen and done.

Mingling an insider's view of modern Hollywood with a wild streak of visionary fantasy, Coldheart Canyon is a book without parallel: an irresistible and unmerciful picture of Hollywood and its demons, told with all the style and raw narrative power that have made Clive Barker's books and films a phenomenon worldwide.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

HBarker fans may breathe a sigh of relief. That the Walt Disney Company is paying $8 million for ancillary rights to the author's forthcoming for-all-ages novel series, The Arabat Quartet (first volume due out in 2002), doesn't mean the British master of dark fantasy has lost his savage bite. Barker's new novel is a ferocious indictment of (and backhanded tribute to) Hollywood Babylon, depicted through Barker's glorious imagination as a nexus of human and inhuman evil where fleshly pursuits corrupt the spirit. It's also one ripping ghost story, spooky and suspenseful, as well as a departure for Barker in that here, as never before, the fantastic mingles with the real, kind of.Many ghosts haunt the titular canyon, and some of them are the shades of men and women we already know as shadows of the silver screen: Victor Mature makes an appearance, as do George Sanders, Mary Pickford and many others. When alive, these stars and their colleagues were drawn by the beautiful, rapacious film star Katya Lupi to her magnificent home in Los Angeles's Coldheart Canyon. What kept them at the house, even after death, is the incredible room in its lowest story. Assembled from thousands of painted tiles, that room brought to California in the 1920s from an ancient monastery in Romania is literally alive with evil; the tiles depict a world that mortals may enter, and within which the Queen of Hell has condemned a nobleman to hunt forever, or until he entraps her son. The room's powers bestow timeless youth on some, including Katya, but give rise to monstrous entities as well. In the present day, into this horrific place enter several modern sorts, most notably A-list film hero Todd Pickett and a dowdy woman, head of Todd's fan club, whose courage and good sense mark her as the novel's hero. The narrative rocks, as Barker's always do, with intense violence and sex sacred, profane and grotesque; a torrent of intent and emotion from the depraved to the sublime; and, here, an impressive thematic excavation of the interplay between illusion and reality, the fantastic and the real. Many of the players without famous names are reminiscent, nastily, of known celebrities; decoding this roman … clef is fun. But entertainment is only one card Barker flashes. Along with the others a fluid writing style; a canvas whose twisted originality rivals Bosch; a depth of theme; and an understanding of the human yearning for good and evil alike they add up to a royal flush, one of the most accomplished, and most notable, novels of the year. (On sale Oct. 8.) Forecast: Major ad/promo, including a five-city author tour, plus the book's excellence and the buzz surrounding Barker's Disney deal, as well as a dynamite b&w cover photo of the author as an old-time film star, will make this novel Barker's most popular and most talked-about book to date.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

It is 1916 in the Hollywood of Theda Bara and Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and silent film star Katya Lupi receives a magnificent gift: an entire room constructed of hand-painted tiles removed from a Romanian monastery and installed, piece by piece, on her Hollywood estate. Not only is the room an aesthetic masterpiece but it is also possessed by the Devil. Katya, a woman of strong desires and appetites, quickly learns to use its powers to her advantage, ensnaring the souls of other cinema legends who share her thirst for beauty, fame, and fortune. From this dangerous precipice, Barker, whose numerous best-selling novels (Galilee, etc.) and experience as a film producer have won him a loyal following, entices his readers to leap into a fantastical world populated by ghostly beasts that roam the hills of a modern-day Tinseltown. His masterly descriptions of this world and the pathological behavior that occurs within it provide an eerie realism, compelling the reader to venture further. Essential for Barker fans, though others may be disappointed in the unevenness that results from the emphasis on plot at the expense of character development.
-Nancy McNicol, Hagaman Memorial Lib., East Haven, CT
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 688 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (October 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060182970
• ISBN-13: 978-0060182977
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (144 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,841,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool in 1952. He is the worldwide bestselling author of the Books of Blood, and numerous novels including Imajica, The Great and Secret Show, Sacrament and Galilee. In addition to his work as a novelist and short story writer he also illustrates, writes, directs and produces for the stage and screen. His films include Hellraiser, Hellbound, Nightbreed and Candyman. Clive lives in Beverly Hills, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Over-the-top, lurid, long...and absolutely UNFORGETTABLE!, May 21, 2004

By 

RMurray847 "afilmcritic.com" (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Coldheart Canyon (Mass Market Paperback)

Clive Barker is a writer who never takes the subtle way out. It's a cliche that sometimes the scariest things are those things which are only hinted it or suggested (shower scene in PSYCHO is often trotted out as an example). Barker seems to believe that he can induce fear by pounding us with graphic details...not for the faint of heart. And he's such an adept writer, that he often succeeds, mostly because his imagination dares to go where no one has gone before.

COLDHEART CANYON deals with the movie business. A '20s era silent-movie siren has a room installed in her house made entirely of tile taken from a monestery in Romania. This tile, some 30,000 pieces, may actually have been built by Lilith, the wife of Satan, and it seems to have...shall we say...remarkable qualities. The '20s era movie star and all her friends and fellow stars are transfixed and transformed by the power of this room, known as "The Devil's Country." Nothing subtle here. Then we skip forward to present day Hollywood, where star Todd Pickett makes the mistake of getting plastic surgery and suffers severe damage. He takes refuge from the press at the long abandoned "pleasure palace" of the '20s era star, Katya, that he has never heard of. No one seems to live in the house, but we soon find out otherwise.

I've only scratched the surface of this wildy imaginative, almost bloated, novel. It's grand to read a book that takes on, with great humor, the foibles of the movie industry, and turns that satire into a horror novel of massive proportions. The house has one mystery after another, and the fates of the people who cross paths with the house, its grounds, its "residents" and especially The Devil's Country are drawn out in exquisite detail.

Many have criticised the book for being too long, but I find Barker to be a writer of such power that you get swept along with long passages that don't seem important, but compel you anyway. Some have criticized an early passage, for example, in which Todd deals with taking his very sick dog to the vet's and the aftermath of this rather mundane situation. But he's a huge movie star, so we're interested in seeing how those around him react to him. And it helps to establish Todd as a real person...not just a generic star. We sympathize with him then, which is good, because it's hard to hold that sympathy later on. And just when the dog seems forgotten...

Like Barker's other novels, such as Weaveworld and the startlingly beautiful Imajica, he mixes intense, believable feelings like those we might have in a love story (Barker conveys how love can grow in unlikely places VERY well) with some of the most graphic horror anywhere. We are thus given characters who seem very real and palbable to us, and they are thrust into the most outlandish situations anywhere.

Whereas Stephen King makes horror "believable" by sticking with mundane, everyday details (I like King very, very much...his approach is different but great as well), Barker hammers us with the power of his imagery. The thingst that happen are so shocking, so horrible, it almost takes your breath away.

COLDHEART CANYON is great because it takes place in a world we might recognize, not in another land altogether (such as in IMAJICA). It's heroine comes from the most unlikely sources, and she is an inspiration and a wonderful achievement for Barker.

Be warned: the graphic horror is just that...graphic in the EXTREME. And the scenes of sexuality are just about the most horrific, gruesome and twisted you'll see ANYWHERE. It takes a brave heart to venture into COLDHEART CANYON. If you've got that, I believe you'll be richly rewarded.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Barker (Almost) Returns, November 24, 2001

By 

Joseph Loria "J-Lo" (Carmel, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story (Hardcover)

Those dreading another limp, mushy delivery from Barker (think Galilee or Sacrament) can release that collectively held breath. Barker is back...sort of. While Coldheart Canyon is no Imajica or Weaveworld in scope of vision or imagination, the suspense, mythology, and characterizations herein certainly make up for the new-age, nice-guy deliveries of late. Here Barker offers Hollywood satire sandwiched between the opposing forces of spirituality. It doesn't have the bloodied edge of Cabal or his short fiction, and there are jaw-dropping discrepencies and flat-out mistakes in the plotting--why is the quality of editing always inversely proportional to the projected revenue? And yet there are scenes painted within that resonate with beauty and dread as only Barker can accomplish, and it's good to feel that chill again. It's also nice to have a decent horror novel releasd this year, with Dan Simmons doing suspense fiction and Dean Koontz doing what I can only describe as evangelical suspense fiction. Along with Black House, Coldheart Canyon has reaffirmed my belief in the genre. Stay tuned.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Clive Barker misses the mark this time, very disappointing., October 2, 2001

By 

M. Daneker (Spinnerstown, Pa USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story (Hardcover)

What Clive Barker does best, what sets him apart from the likes of Stephen King and the Wannabes, is to write with a furious imagination that kindles the spark of fantasy and brings it to an adult level were it never lie before. His prior works, most notably Weaveworld allowed those of us who think the The Wizard of Oz is a great concept but wish it wasnt so, well childish to have our own OZ complete with Sex, Drugs, Violence and a real Menace that is not for the kids. What he does equally well is to establish living, soul-filled characters that transcend the carbon copy heros we are so used to (in every, single Stephen King Novell.) Add to that his brilliance as an artist, a director and his ability to visit the Oz concept with The Thief Of Always his book for younger readers and he becomes the most well rounded fantasy figures alive. It is then a great mystery how something as empty and unfulfilling as Coldheart Canyon came about.
This story of redemption, at a price, is filled with generic characters, forced plot lines and unoriginal narrative. Its Clive Barker on autopilot as it reads like something someone imitating Clive may write rather than a real work by the author himself.
A semi  aging movie star, Todd Picket, agrees to plastic surgery as a career facelift. This makes little sense when you consider the considerable power Middle aged men have in Hollywood right now, Todd is about Tom Cruises age and I dont think Tom needs a facelift anytime soon to get women. Also, when you consider that Middle aged men are now regularly staring with Twenty  something women as leads (think Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Sean Connery) the thought that a man would fear laugh lines in a time when maturity is in is preposterous. The Procedure has to go wrong for the plot to work; the actor needs a hideaway to lick his wounds and ends up in the pad of a 1920s screen vixen.
Below the house is a room constructed by the devils wife, Lillith, with Katya Lupi (the Screen Vixen) uses to stay young. Outside the house, the ghosts of dead stars roam having tasted the rooms power and wanting back. They also have orgies and breed with the local wildlife producing offspring so the Author has monsters to kill people off with violently.
Nothing really happens once the set up is in place, sure theres lots of sex, lots of terrible things, but nothing interesting, theres no plot, no point to it all. The background story of Katya and the film stars of the Twenties and thirties would have made for a better book. Todd is a boring self-serving idiot, Katya is supposed to be our Villain, but she does everything to be loved then kills what she loves without explanation of why shes like this. Tammy, the Todd Fanatic who saves the day, sort of, is an oaf whos made a shambles of her life in the pointless pursuit of a man who only exists to her through film.
The concept here is an exercise in Hollywood stereotypes with a horror fantasy twist but the result is tired and labored. Clive was here before producing the true story Gods and Monsters to Academy Award Winning effect. What Clive misses her is that beneath the stereotypes must exist real people, but he only allows that at the very end, by then we dont care any more. These clones cant carry a 600+ page novel as they have no depth and therefore we simply dont care what happens to them, or this book. Coldheart Canyon lacks heart and has no soul. Go rent Gods & Monsters on Video.