Spooky Month Recommendation - Clive Barker’s Books of Blood Volume 1

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen and enby lovelies. It’s Spooktober, and with the massive diet of horror that I consume, I thought it was only right to turn the Chogg.Blog into a bit of a bloody buffet. For the rest of the month, I’ll be serving up a selection of some classic scares that I think you should delve into at least once and ideally during this, the spookiest of seasons.

And what better way to start than with legendary author Clive Barker’s first volume from his Books of Blood.

Before we start, make sure you check in for the rest of the month to stay updated with all my picks for October goodness. Putting your email in at the bottom of the page means you can get notified whenever I put a new post up here, and it helps me out massively. But that’s enough set up. Into the terror.

Clive Barker’s ‘Books of Blood’

Clive Barker drip-fed his short stories to the world through this series, starting in 1984 with the first anthology collection. For those unfamiliar with Clive Barker, he is the man behind Hellraiser and Candyman, although many of his stories are lost in translation in the leap to the screen.

The first Hellraiser still stands, directed by Barker himself, as a lovely example of the things Barker often weaves into his stories; personal and private feeling narratives that put character first and find the places where humanity and the supernatural rub against each other. Almost every one of the stories in Books of Blood has something to say about classic horror, about fear, about sex and sexuality and about the art of storytelling. Although the volumes have been collected into thicker tomes and the original six volumes can now be bought as two books, my little exploration into the first volume had me reeling from one of the most original voices in horror that I have had the pleasure of reading.

So, about the stories…

What’s in the book?

There are 6 short stories here, with a little something for everybody. So, without giving too much away for any potential readers, I want to give you a little taste of what to expect before I go deeper on my two favourites. Opening up with ‘The Book of Blood’ frames the stories nicely as tales that the dead themselves have etched into the flesh of a supposed medium. This is a story about the reality of death crashing violently against those who are seeking it out.

Next up is ‘The Midnight Meat Train’, which follows two protagonists - a disillusioned man getting on a train and a serial killer who butchers for a greater purpose and hunts exclusively on the subway. The two end up on the train together, of course, but the story ends up being mainly about how we could possibly reason with living in a broken society. When the secret everybody knows is that those in power wield it against us, is it better to fight back or to give in? While I was reading, it was here that I realised this was something special. If your favourite October classic is anything from Seven to Saw, then read ‘The Midnight Meat Train’.

‘The Yattering and Jack’ has a hard time following the story before it but it does so by taking a very different approach to horror from every other story in this collection. A demon, called the Yattering, has been commanded by his superior, Beelzebub, to haunt an ordinary man called Jack. The Yattering goes to some extreme lengths, doing everything it can to ruin Jack’s life, but Jack seems to either never notice or never care. Bubbling under this story is the tension of a very nearly toppled sanity, but Barker never lets us take it too seriously. Even the sadness that threatens to infect Jack all pays off in a cathartic ending. I think this could be your favourite if your Halloween watchlist includes Beetlejuice or Ghostbusters. Don’t be scared off by how gruesome some of the other stories here are, either: this one is breezy.

For now, we’ll skip the next story and the final entry in the volume to talk about ‘Sex, Death and Starshine’. A half-way decent director is putting on a performance of Twelfth Night in a soon-to-be-condemned theatre. This is probably the story that wields sex the best as a tool of horror, if the title didn’t give that away. The director is having an affair with the star of the production, who is the only famous actor in the show, but is a terrible performer. The whole cast is preparing for the press to rip them to pieces after opening night, when a friendly lover of the arts appears to give his advice and talk about how the theatre used to be. With an introspective exploration about creativity and what it is that we are made to do, the acting troupe becomes a source of a different grim terror that is less tense and more final.

The other two stories are my favourites, so I want to give them a little bit more time.

‘Pig Blood Blues’ follows an ex-police officer who takes up a new position teaching at a juvenile detention facility. I’m going to tell you what I can while going light on the spoilers, but one day I’m hoping to put together my full analysis on both this and the next story. The ‘pig’ starts to uncover secrets, either pointing to a terribly disturbed young man or a grand conspiracy by all of the other boys. With a few mentions of our protagonist perhaps having feelings for one of the young boys, it is hard to root for him despite his efforts to root out the evil in the institution.

The descriptions here are dark and disturbing, but the story itself seems incomprehensible and unknowable. The terror is never really explained, despite the climactic final moments. The police are just as filthy as the huge pig that lives on the grounds, and whatever progress he might make with the boys is never going to be enough to turn over institutional problems, both at his new place of employment and his past job. This story is weird, terrifying and distinctly Halloweeny! I’ll be rereading it this October, and for anyone who is a fan of The Wicker Man or The Thing, where the question of trust and humanity is at the forefront, I think this is a must-read.

The very last story in the collection is ‘In the Hills, the Cities’. This is my favourite short story here, and maybe one of my new favourites of all time. Barker starts by introducing us to a gay couple travelling in Yugoslavia. When they started out on their journey, their passionate relationship had fuelled them to be eager and excited. Now, the pair are falling out of love and constantly getting on each other’s nerves. One beautiful moment sees Mick’s thoughts spiralling toward how he really feels about Judd:

Judd was a journalist, a professional pundit. He felt, like most journalists Mick had encountered, that he was obliged to have an opinion on everything under the sun. Especially politics; that was the best trough to wallow in. You could get your snout, eyes, head and front hooves in that mess of much and still have a fine old time splashing around.

I love all of this; interpersonal drama that allows us to understand who these people are, what they think of each other and what they want. They are both so deeply unhappy, but going through the motions, that when the strange celebrations of a culture they don’t fully understand arrive in front of them, and go horribly wrong because of politics, among other things, we understand the reactions of both men. I wish I could reveal more about this; I would recommend this story to anybody and everybody. It is so strange and in the hands of another writer I’m not sure it ever could have been pulled off. It becomes an exploration of relationships but also civic pride, community, insanity and so much more. If you read it now, you can check in for a more detailed breakdown soon!

A Spooktober Night Read

Every single one of these stories is ready to finish in about two nights of reading. And somehow the atmosphere still feels current, the gore is still fresh and warm, the twists and turns are so unique that I can’t help but sing its praises. They strike a perfect balance, with some bordering on more intriguing investigative stories and others literally demonic comedies. If even one person who reads this goes and reads the Books of Blood, I’ll be content. Theming never slipped so effortlessly through a book of horror. I’ll be diving into Volume 2 next - if it’s even half as good, it’ll still be worth shouting about.

Thanks for reading this Chogg.Blog! Check out my Weapons review for more horror hot-takes, and make sure to pop your email below or go donate to let me keep doing this over on the ABOUT page. Have a spooky week lovelies <3