Customer Reviews

Galilee

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

I am a huge fan of Clive Barkers work and have read a large part of his collection. After reading Galilee, it is easily one fo my favorites. Once you begin to read, you immediately become immersed in the lives of the novel's narrator and those characters that he chronicals. The novel involves two families; The Gearys and the Barbarossas. They have been in contempt of each other for over one hundred and fifty years. The Barbarossas are an ancient clan who's mother and father originated with the creation of Earth and have the ability to seemingly live forever. The Geary's are a dynasty of American royalty that came into power following the civil war. Their lives are then intertwined by one person; Galilee Barbarossa. The book is lavish in its detail of sex and violence. Once you pick it up, it will be hard to put down. It seems that in no portion of this novel that it drags on. This is a must read for fans of history, intrigue, romance, and the inside lives of the rich and powerful.

I read Imajica (both volumes) last year, and I must say I was gobsmacked by the sheer brilliance of Barker's narrative and imagination. So I started reading Barker's Galilee with relish, expecting an intriguing and fascinating tale of mysterious gods and goddesses, etc. But, woh! After some 200 hundred pages, it felt like I was fourteen again, reading my daily Mills & Boon paperback! I mean, the Rachel character was just soooo predictable and how on earth did Galilee decide she must be the one and only after sooo many (women...and men...and children...)? Nope, your standard Barbara Cartland yarn here: from rags to riches lass finds out her handsome John John Kennedy look-alike husband has somehow turned into a monster, but fortunately is bedded by the super-endowed Galilee who whisks her off (eventually...) to his "kingdom". Boring....and Barker must definitely have a sequel in mind.....

I have always seen Clive Barker novels sitting alongside novels by Anne Rice and Stephen King at airport bookshops and, as such, have been relatively disinclined to spend my cash and time reading them.

However, during a stop at London's Gatwick airport I was thumbing through the usual selection of Turow, Grisham, and Crichton when I noticed this book sitting out of place next to the aforementioned.

Picking it up, I was first impressed by the size of the book. "Alas", I thought, "This must be some tale". Turning the book over, I read the covernotes and was instantly drawn to the concept of these two warring families. A hinting towards the supernatural intrigued me and I realized that, upon reading this epic, I may not find myself swallowed into some goreish nightmare.

I put the book down and bought a Grisham novel.

A few weeks later, I was back at Gatwick airport and with the repulsive thought of another 6 hours air time ahead of me, I sauntered back into the bookstore. My mental association sprung into action and I picked up Galilee and walked straight for the counter.

Before the aircraft doors had been closed, I had already started reading the tale of the Gearys and the Barbarossas and soon found myself completely immersed in the world that was being weaved around me.

It is plain to see the value of writing a story from a fictional storytellers persepective. With a novel of this size and complexity, it is refreshing for the reader to be taken back into the home of the fictional writer and listen to his ramblings which, as well as being highly entertaining, contain some very significant plot markers.

However, the bulk of the story revolves around the potential battle between the Gearys and the Barbarossas. These two families of who I will say little are linked. This link is obvious from the start but it's nature is not revealed until much much later in the story.

The story is told with so much depth and conviction that I was left wondering why I had never seen the Gearys in the newspapers! Lightly peppered with grotesque eroticism and supernatural violence, this is a story that held me from the first page to the last.

*** Spoilers Ahead ****

As the story ends, I was only slightly disappointed that the violent viscious clash between these two families never emereged and that the promised downfall of the Barbarossa's home L'Enfant never materialized.

My suspicions of a potential sequel have been confirmed on reading Mr. Barkers notes on this novel.

I've been a big Clive Barker fan since the early nineties and have consumed his novels as the are released. As his works progressed, Barker's interests in subject matter have shifted from pure splatter punk/relentless horror to more metaphysical matters. "Galilee" is a good book. It shows Barker's exploration of a what many of his fans may consider a foreign genre. This is not "The Damnation Game" or "Books of Blood" territory. Barker tells a story of two families, the Barbarossas, a clan of near immortals, and the Gearys, a bunch of influential aristocrats who draw resemblences to the Kennedys. Both have been linked together since the Civil War and now come to a great change when love is thrown into the fray between the Barbarossa's prodigal son, Galilee, and the Geary's newest member, Rachel Pallenberg. The story is very rich, very grand in scale and made up of complicated matters. Barker's prose is still extrodinary and I think it is still improving with each novel he writes. The only complaint I had with this novel is the ending. It is rumored that we may return to see what happens to the two families in another novel, but I was hoping for a little more closure. Barker opened many doors to this story, but he unfortunately does not clearly explain what we're seeing through these doors. It's as if looking at an image through a pane of glass smeared with grease. This is especially true with the back story of the Barbarossa family, particularly of the narrator, Maddox, who touches upon certain events on his life but fails to follow through. This may, however, serve as a poignant part to the novel's narrative since the subject that Maddox treads upon is difficult for him, in character, to discuss. Still, it would have been nice to know what happened instead of having to piece together abstractions. There's so much that's going to happen when the novel concludes, it leaves you feeling too anxious. The fates of the characters are temporarily resolved, yet not even these resolutions are absolute. This story and its elements may turn off Barker's fans who expect something more reminiscent of his earlier works. But, if you have enjoyed the maturity that Barker's developed over the years, then you'll most likely find "Galiliee" to be worth your time.

So that was it? The linkage between the families due to a few debts of honor the ageless Galilee had acquired. He couldn't let down the first Geary or his wife, but he could carry out multiple murders presumably indefinitely which left him morally bereft? Seems like the honorable thing to do was to tell the Geary's to forget it and avoid slaughtering countless innocents. In other words the reasons for the linkage were implausible given the make up of the Galilee character, especially given the experiences he must have had in over 2000 years of existence. Meanwhile the Gearys have no henchmen, for multimillionaires one would think a few thugs make be available to them, but no they do everything themselves, unlikley. The prevarication in the narration, the multiple allusions to future events infuriated me. The book was like wading through literary treacle. Painful, I shall not be buying the sequel. Good things....useful description, some good characterisations, but the central premise of the warring families does not have enough root cause.

This one is simple. You love it or hate it. It is an involving book of charecters with tragic flaws. You can not go into this book expecting typical Clive Barker. It is a fantasy romance, not a fantasy horror. It is not scary. If you like Barker give it a try.

Wanting to be more than a horror writer, Barker wanders off into Anne Rice territory and comes up his own overlong exercise in excess. Had this work been plotted with half the focus and forethought of Weaveworld, Secret Show, or even Everville, this could have been an excellent experiment into a new genre. Ultimately it comes off as rambling, indulgent, and unfocused. Leaving the reader asking, "what was the point?" That should never happen, especially with a writer as talented as Clive Barker.

(SIGH), I must say being a colossal Barker fan I was more than a bit let down. The book moved slowly, while gradually gaining momentum. I was left with the feeling of unfullfilled promises. The characters had the potential to be, well enthralling but were mostly just annoying and never really delivering. I wasn't too particularly fond of the first person angle either, it just doesn't seem to suit him. There's no denying his ablilty to etch the landscape of his words on one's mind but 'G' was simply a poor display of story-telling. I shudder to voice the words but: GALILEE WAS AN UTTERLY PAINFUL DISAPPOINTMENT!

What a fabulous tale - endless weaving - great language - fun characters - a gothic Forsythe Saga. I haven't read Barker's other work, but now am anxious to give it a try. Whatever you say, you have to admit he's an entertainer! (He's got the American gossipy style down pat - not unlike Tom Wolfe and Gore Vidal, in a way. I look forward to Galilee #2.)

I am a fan of Clive Barker but I found Galilee to be a big dissapointment. The reader was promised a firecracker ending but in the end only got a damp squib.