Coldheart Canyon

In the 1920s, magnate Zeffer buys his mistress Katya a room decorated with Boschian mosaics of sex and violence and in the 1990s, Todd Pickett decides he needs a face-lift to save his career; both do not know that they have made a decision which risks their lives and their souls. And somehow, sooner or later, everyone from Tammy, the overweight, obsessive, good president of Todd's fan club, to Micky, a dying former child star with a life full of secrets, ends up in the rich cloying jungle that the gardens of Coldheart Canyon have become, finding out things they never wanted to know about sex, madness, courage and generosity.

Barker has always been brilliant at showing us just how bad things can get--the games of sexual power, the corrupting metamorphoses; here he adds something: a genuine conviction of the possibility of human goodness and kindness that saves people. --Roz Kaveney

I wasn't expecting 'Coldheart Canyon' - I was waiting for Galillee 2, the third book of the Art, and the first book of the Abarat Quartet, so to hear that Barker had released a new 'dark' novel, was a nice surprise.

Coldheart Canyon is a tale about a Hollywood Star who's coming to the end of his shelf-life. In a desperate bid to prolong his carreer, he opts for plastic surgery. However, when it goes wrong, he retreats to a recently-bought mansion which houses, amongst other things, an exquisitely-tiled cellar that contains more secrets than anyone dared imagine.

Qhile many authors are good at 'lifting the surface to reveal the rot', Clive usually goes one better, and also lifts the rot to reveal something even more fascinating and disturbing. Coldheart Canyon is no exception to this. It deals with the shallowness of Hollywood, and the disillusionment of discovering that the persona that celebrities portray is just a mask. However, this is merely the rot. The core of the story extends to the metaphysical and supernatural, and of the effects of selling your soul for the price of fame.

The book starts off fairly slowly (admittedly), focusing on the main character, Todd Pickett. The first chapter deals with Todd's declining career, and the loss of his dog. I was aware that Clive Barker's dog died, and I extend my sympathies for his loss, I'd even appreciate the fact that Clive does 'exorcise his demons' through his writing and artwork, but I felt that devoting a good chunk of the book to it was sheer indulgence. I don't want to sound harsh, but other authors also lose dogs, but if they incorporate their memories of that loss into a work of fiction, it should be somehow relative to the story, and not appear as a mini-novella that has no real place.

When the novel finally gets moving, we are back on (un)familiar ground. There is again, a strong creepy vibe that builds up as you read the story (another thing that Barker is good at), and before you know it, you're tearing through the pages....

All of a sudden, however, there is a sudden halt with a string of sex scenes, one after the other, with increaingly diverse and unusual positions and practices. I think I'm really too liberal to be squeamish or disgusted with any erotica in a novel , (and I must admit, it made more interesting reading than the chapter about the dog) but it just went on for ages, and I felt the balance between the erotic and the gratuitously pornographic lose itself. It got to a point where it became a bit boring. Barker has written short passages involving sexual imagery in many of his other books that have more erotic charge than this! (I suppose if I wasn't reading it on the tube at the time, I may have been able to appreciate it more.)
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE EASILY SHOCKED, OR YOU FIND SEXUAL IMAGERY DISGUSTING!

Coldheart Canyon is not Barker's best work. It could have been improved on, but the book is still thoroughly enjoyable. I just don't think I'd read it again (even the sexy parts). It just doesn't have the same power as Imajica or Weaveworld, and the editors should have done something to control this. It would have got four stars from me if the above two 'unneccessary elements' that I comented on were left out.


Classic Barker depth and genius.   October 18, 2002
the great amphibian (Hampshire, UK)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

First of all, this is a really good story, with original characters, (geniously so in the case of Todd Pickett, due to the mix of public perception and his underlying real personality not being a cliche), and some real classic Barker details thrown in. (Read on if you don't mind a few potential spoilers). The 'other world' in this story is a land inhabited by wonderful creatures, created by Satan's wife to accomodate three classic sword and shield knight's to hunt for countless years until they catch their prize. I personally thought Barker's insight has matured to a highly refined plateux, (the only Barker I had hitherto read was penned over a decade before Coldheart), and his description of this 'other world' is far better than his attempts at expressing those images he trys to convey than Weaveworld's 'The Fugue'. Remeber: not only does Clive Barker use more imagination and insight than any other author I can imagine, but his general quality of writing is excellent; with a great range of techniques used to make not a sentence dull. Clive Barker has insight shown by no other authors, or other artists, that I have studied the work of. I use the word 'study' because Barker's work is not only cogent and readable, but highly complex. I don't claim to understand all of Barker's ideas and insights, but through the countless clever little details, some ideas really tested by brain's metal. You can't look at a passage and expect it to make sense on it's own in many cases, with these complex concepts, and you generally have to 'get to know' Barker a little, (however stupid that sounds, you need to read a bit of Barker before you can expect to follow all of the undertones). Trying to convey quite how amazing Barker's work is is a thankless task, and I would really rather not do it; so if you have any sense, (which I'm sure you do 8), then read Barker. A few ideas of Clive's were better than anything I have heard from him of any other books of his I have read, (eg. HBH, BOB, WW), such as the way Epstadt expends by blooming flowers, the description of the air expelled from hell when Lilith visits The Hunt, and Barker's vision of an angel. There is too much to write, so this can't be a comprehensive review, and I will stop now.


Clive is fabulous......   September 18, 2002
Tequilatoes@hotmail.co.uk (London, London United Kingdom)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Coldheart Cannon was my first Clive Barker novel....
Bullied into reading it by my flatmates I reluctantly picked it up.
I have never missed so many of my tube stops - completely hooked from the first page.
Beautifully written with glorious imagery that twists from the sublime to the horrific on nearly every page.
There are some great characters and a mesmerising story, which stomps along at a great pace.
I have gone on to read Imajica & now am devouring Weaveworld both of which have not disappointed. Clive is fabulous!