In the Flesh [Paperback]

Clive Barker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1991

In the depths of an abandoned steam bath, strangely beautiful women seduce two businessmen into a ritual of macabre sexuality; in a Greek asylum, wise men race frogs to decide the fate of the world; a petty convict's cellmate reveals to him the gruesome birth of evil; a young woman's slum research leads her into the hookhanded grip of the Candyman, a vicious supernatural killer.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Four novellas by horror writer Barker ( The Inhuman Condition ) make up this slim but worthwhile collection. In one, a prison inmate is haunted by the spirit of his grandfather; in another, a young woman studying graffiti in a seedy housing project encounters a local legend in the flesh. This British writer's plots are extremely inventive and creative; like Peter Straub, he produces intellectual horror stories that are truly frightening. Only the final story, in which an American tourist stumbles across a strange asylum, with world-shaking results, is weak in comparison to the compelling eeriness and atmosphere of the others, yet still clever. Horror fans unacquainted with Barker's work will enjoy a new author; established fans will be enthusiastic. Recommended for large fiction collections. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. Eric W. Johnson, Univ. of Bridgeport Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Detroit News With elegant, terrifying strokes, Barker draws a universe of fear underlying the commonplace....Behind every mirror, under every carpet and in the heart of dirty streets is an elemental evil, a raw and hungry power....This is good, scary, stuff...The pacing is inexorable, the settings chilling, and the fates remorseless. In the Flesh makes you wonder what horror lies around the corner.

The Boston Herald [Barker] gives his stories the certainties of bad dreams...The first and last stories in this collection stand out as horror classics, meriting frequent glimpses into dark cornersfor a good while after they are done.

The Philadelphia Inquirer Fiendishly good...unnerving, inspired...death, sex, fear, and self-knowledge come forth in many guises.

The New York Times Book Review ...plays upon our unconscious terrors...What a breath of fresh, if chilling, air. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 255 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (April 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671743872
• ISBN-13: 978-0671743871
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,635,067 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

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4 miniatures from a master craftsman, July 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: In the Flesh (Paperback)

This is subversive literature of the best kind. It targets and fires at male sexual identity, the educated upper middle class and the world's governing clan, turning them on their ear and leaving them the worst for damage. Barker is a great aesthete of the fantastic and an iconoclast that leaves no turn unstoned. Here are four short stories that show a master spellbinder at work:

"In the Flesh": Cleveland Smith, recurrent criminal, is undergoing one of his usual stops at jail. Unable to leave the crime life, he studies, searching for the origin of sin. When a spooky new kid is put as his cellmate, he is placed on the threshold to the answers he is looking for...

"The Forbidden": An English academic steps out from the Ivory Tower into the housing projects, and learns from the local gossip the urban legends of everyday violence and death. Yet she refuses to believe them. So the urban legend materializes for her own benefit, in the shape of the Candyman...

"The Madonna": Two men, a racketeer and an ineffectual businessman, plan to turn an abandoned swimming pool spa into a recreational complex. But this two men, who go around displaying their confused manliness, are about to find how fragile their masculinity can be, and whether anything will be left of them afterwards...

"Babel's Children": Vanessa Jape always refused to take the clearly signaled road. She just had to venture through the unmarked path. So it was no surprise she ended getting lost during her vacation at Greece. What she wasn't expecting, though, was finding the convent, the unusual dwellers therein, and the real rulers of the world...

From gory horror to cosmic dread to a fable beyond classification, Barker is one of the best writers of dark fantasy you will ever find.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Each Story Better Than the Last, August 24, 2008

By 

velveetahead (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Flesh (Paperback)

I had read a lot of Clive Barker's short stories when I was younger, but forgot which ones I had read since I hadn't read them all. I couldn't remember if I had read In the Flesh or Inhuman Condition since they both started with the same letter. While reading this one, none of it was familiar until I got to the second of four stories, called "The Forbidden". It is the basis for the Candyman movies. I never saw the movie, but the story stuck with me since it was very creepy and gross. When I read it, the movie had not been made, but one scene in it became ingrained in my brain. A woman who is doing some graduate school research on a very poor neighborhood. She goes into an abandoned house to find drawn on the wall an extremely disturbing face laughing, but the doorway was being used as the mouth. It was so descriptive that when I had an assignment in my junior English class to describe a room that another person in the class would have to guess who it belonged to, I described that room. No one guessed it was the room of a psychopathic killer, but instead thought it was a messed up teenager. :)

The first story in the book, called "In the Flesh", didn't do much for me. It had supernatural and horror elements to it with a guy who had questions about good and evil and where sin comes from. Then he gets a cellmate who just isn't quite right. I think when I first started reading Clive Barker, I was attracted more to his horror stories, but as I got older, I enjoyed his fantasy stories more. The first one was more in the horror realm, but beyond the final twist and the "city" that he dreams about, I didn't care much about the crazy cellmate. I actually could have enjoyed the entire story if the cellmate had been left out, even though I guess it was the point of the story, I just didn't care for that half of it.

I actually enjoyed each story more than the last one so I did enjoy "The Forbidden" more, but my favorite part is still the room description. The rest of it was not as cool as I remembered. I did enjoy the third story, "The Madonna", that did have supernatural elements but it seemed more in the fantasy vein and I just loved it. It is about an abandoned bath house where naked women swayed some men to come to them, but the men might not have wanted to do it if they knew the consequences.

My favorite story was the last one called "Babel's Children" where a women who loves to drive off the beaten path comes across a nunnery that isn't run by nuns, but has held some brilliant minds captive for years for some very twisted games. It was the most realistic story out of all of them, but you still had to suspend your disbelief about the games being played. With the way some things happen in the world, you wonder sometimes that maybe major world decisions are being made the way it is described in the book. I had a good chuckle about the absurdity of it.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Forbidden and Others, April 15, 2006

By 

Joseph Adams "brother" (Superior, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Flesh (Paperback)

This was one of Clive Barker's early books, a collection of short stories. Included is the novella for one of the most realistically terrifying horror films ever made, and an icon of its time, The Candyman. As far as horror series go, this is one of the scariest because it's so realistic. As far as Barker goes, I can respect him. As a teenager and young adult I idolized him, then as I began doing my own projects I emulated influences like Barker's kind of disturbing Christian constructs and also those of [...]. I think that Clive Barker will remain an icon of the 80s and 90s generation of gothic horror because Pinhead and The Candyman are right up there with Freddy or Jason, which they somehow continue to make today. The new Hellraiser movies became stereotypical staring with the fourth one to the newer ones, as it remained realistic, moreso making the cenobites seem like the good guys amongst a mess of caricatures.