4316: Cold, Cold Heart
So here's a thing! I hope it saves you some time, but I doubt it [who of you are so inclined to pick up a Clive Barker novel in the first place?]:What the expletive did I just read?
I have been rethinking my personal mission to read at least one book from authors I haven't read before, particularly famous ones I feel as though I should have read before but haven't due to circumstance, because many of the "must read!" books that fall into my hands are well below the bar I've (inadvertently?) set for myself. For a number of reasons, horror stories aren't particularly to my taste, but I can't even figure out if Coldheart Canyon is supposed to be horror or just horrible.
I can summarize the entire book in two words: Creepy Sex. It's slightly more convoluted than that, but what I could understand of the book made little sense beyond Clive Barker deciding he wanted to write about depraved fornication. BDSM? Check. Bestiality? Check. Ghosts? Check. Mutilation? Check. CHILD ABUSE?? Check!!! (although it's demon-child abuse, but still) I get the impression he just wanted to write the hardest-core sex scenes humanity could possibly (and even impossibly) manage, without any particular purpose to it. Granted, most horror stories I've been subjected to haven't struck me as having a purpose beyond the scare factor, but Coldheart Canyon takes 200 pages to start the story, and goes on for 100 pages after the story ends. No fooling--I skimmed so much of the book just because it was both disgusting AND boring, and the only reason I got through as much as I did was to see if there was anything of real substance there.
Nope.
The book starts with an introduction from Clive Barker himself discussing his thought processes in writing the story, which feels like it belongs as an author's note at the end instead of a delay getting the story started, but this is hardly the book's worst fault. In the intro, he discusses how, following the death of his father, the story took a different turn from what he'd planned--which in retrospect seems even more creepy, as I'm certain I wouldn't want MY child writing a horrible porno after being wrapped up with grief over MY death.
Part one is six chapters, which don't really need to be six chapters. This is the entirety of part one in significantly fewer pages: "This guy Willem Zeffer made an unknown orphan named Katya into a famous movie star. To please her, he set out to find a uniquely fabulous gift she would truly appreciate. Somehow, he ends up at a fortress-turned-monastery, where the monks have carefully guarded a room with an elaborate mosaic depicting the most hellacious orgy, including a section where women have flayed off a man's skin (I won't describe the rest of that, but it's needlessly awful). SOMEHOW, this intrigues him, and he buys the room from them, hiring a crew to carefully dismantle it for reassembly in Katya's house. After the room is gone, the head monk spontaneously dies with a broken spirit, and the other monks disperse."
Part two changes the subject to the completely not-sexily-named Todd Pickett--a "fantastically handsome" actor who's known almost entirely for being fantastically handsome. This is the entirety of part two in even fewer pages: "Todd wants to be in a movie that promises to be good, but the movie gets canned. He throws up at his most recent movie premiere from its sheer awfulness. He starts to audition for another movie, but his beloved dog Dempsey gets cancer, and he makes the heart-wrenching decision to put him down."
Seriously. I am not kidding you that there are at least fifty pages devoted to this dog, and the dog plays almost no role in the rest of the book.
Part three is where the actual story starts. I suppose you could argue that part one was important for exposition, but not nearly so important as to go on for as long as it did. The rest of the book goes basically like this: "Todd spontaneously decides, post-Dempsey's-death, that he needs a facelift to continue to compete, but it goes SO BADLY that he goes into hiding, coincidentally into Katya's house with the creepy sex mosaic room. This causes Tammy Lauper--the (fat) woman heading his 'appreciation society'--to go stalking for his whereabouts. When Todd discovers the room, he discovers Katya, who has mysteriously not aged in a hundred(?) years due to the inexplicable powers of the room itself, and who craves Todd because she's tired of sexing up the psychotic ghosts that haunt the canyon. I guess. When Tammy discovers Todd, she also (eventually) discovers the room and breaks the spell over it by letting the incredibly hung(!??) son of the Devil himself suckle from her breasts. Katya gets mad that the room is effectively destroyed and kills Todd (who was protecting Tammy). Tammy defeats Katya by managing to open the doors and let in all the ghosts, who tear Katya to pieces (literally, rending flesh)."
That's really the end of the story, but it keeps going, as I mentioned.
Because he died protecting Tammy, Todd ends up as a form of ghost, which Tammy and Todd's agent discover when they go back to the house "because it felt like unfinished business." There, they find Todd as a partial ghost, sporting a permanent hard-on (as important as THAT is) and running from a bright light that's apparently an angel come to take him to Heaven, seeing as he's dead and all. Todd runs for a while, but after Tammy gets hit, he decides that getting her to safety is more important than not going to Heaven and being dead, so after Tammy is safe, he rejoins his dog.
Yes, the fifty pages of dying dog is important for ONE SENTENCE at the end.
I guess, if anything, I found myself actually growing to like Tammy, who initially comes across as a delusional fanatic so centered on this one actor's looks as to make it nearly her entire life (as her husband leaves her in the end, but her fanatical devotion to Todd makes it surprising that she had a husband in the first place). Her fatness is a strange thing to fix on for so much of the book, where nearly every person who speaks to or even sees her can only think about how fat she is, but it's also a little refreshing to have a deliberately unattractive central female character--however shallow she starts out being.
It's just too bad about the rest of the book.
I can't honestly recommend Coldheart Canyon to anyone. I can't even begin to imagine what audience this is for, except MAYBE whoever claims to like the Fifty Shades of Grey books. It's like a particularly trashy trashy romance, with a side of trash in its own trashy collectible trash bin. If you paid money for this, you got robbed. I didn't pay a thing, and I feel robbed. I want my three hours back!
The GOOD news is I figured out the chicken! =9
I have been rethinking my personal mission to read at least one book from authors I haven't read before, particularly famous ones I feel as though I should have read before but haven't due to circumstance, because many of the "must read!" books that fall into my hands are well below the bar I've (inadvertently?) set for myself. For a number of reasons, horror stories aren't particularly to my taste, but I can't even figure out if Coldheart Canyon is supposed to be horror or just horrible.
I can summarize the entire book in two words: Creepy Sex. It's slightly more convoluted than that, but what I could understand of the book made little sense beyond Clive Barker deciding he wanted to write about depraved fornication. BDSM? Check. Bestiality? Check. Ghosts? Check. Mutilation? Check. CHILD ABUSE?? Check!!! (although it's demon-child abuse, but still) I get the impression he just wanted to write the hardest-core sex scenes humanity could possibly (and even impossibly) manage, without any particular purpose to it. Granted, most horror stories I've been subjected to haven't struck me as having a purpose beyond the scare factor, but Coldheart Canyon takes 200 pages to start the story, and goes on for 100 pages after the story ends. No fooling--I skimmed so much of the book just because it was both disgusting AND boring, and the only reason I got through as much as I did was to see if there was anything of real substance there.
Nope.
The book starts with an introduction from Clive Barker himself discussing his thought processes in writing the story, which feels like it belongs as an author's note at the end instead of a delay getting the story started, but this is hardly the book's worst fault. In the intro, he discusses how, following the death of his father, the story took a different turn from what he'd planned--which in retrospect seems even more creepy, as I'm certain I wouldn't want MY child writing a horrible porno after being wrapped up with grief over MY death.
Part one is six chapters, which don't really need to be six chapters. This is the entirety of part one in significantly fewer pages: "This guy Willem Zeffer made an unknown orphan named Katya into a famous movie star. To please her, he set out to find a uniquely fabulous gift she would truly appreciate. Somehow, he ends up at a fortress-turned-monastery, where the monks have carefully guarded a room with an elaborate mosaic depicting the most hellacious orgy, including a section where women have flayed off a man's skin (I won't describe the rest of that, but it's needlessly awful). SOMEHOW, this intrigues him, and he buys the room from them, hiring a crew to carefully dismantle it for reassembly in Katya's house. After the room is gone, the head monk spontaneously dies with a broken spirit, and the other monks disperse."
Part two changes the subject to the completely not-sexily-named Todd Pickett--a "fantastically handsome" actor who's known almost entirely for being fantastically handsome. This is the entirety of part two in even fewer pages: "Todd wants to be in a movie that promises to be good, but the movie gets canned. He throws up at his most recent movie premiere from its sheer awfulness. He starts to audition for another movie, but his beloved dog Dempsey gets cancer, and he makes the heart-wrenching decision to put him down."
Seriously. I am not kidding you that there are at least fifty pages devoted to this dog, and the dog plays almost no role in the rest of the book.
Part three is where the actual story starts. I suppose you could argue that part one was important for exposition, but not nearly so important as to go on for as long as it did. The rest of the book goes basically like this: "Todd spontaneously decides, post-Dempsey's-death, that he needs a facelift to continue to compete, but it goes SO BADLY that he goes into hiding, coincidentally into Katya's house with the creepy sex mosaic room. This causes Tammy Lauper--the (fat) woman heading his 'appreciation society'--to go stalking for his whereabouts. When Todd discovers the room, he discovers Katya, who has mysteriously not aged in a hundred(?) years due to the inexplicable powers of the room itself, and who craves Todd because she's tired of sexing up the psychotic ghosts that haunt the canyon. I guess. When Tammy discovers Todd, she also (eventually) discovers the room and breaks the spell over it by letting the incredibly hung(!??) son of the Devil himself suckle from her breasts. Katya gets mad that the room is effectively destroyed and kills Todd (who was protecting Tammy). Tammy defeats Katya by managing to open the doors and let in all the ghosts, who tear Katya to pieces (literally, rending flesh)."
That's really the end of the story, but it keeps going, as I mentioned.
Because he died protecting Tammy, Todd ends up as a form of ghost, which Tammy and Todd's agent discover when they go back to the house "because it felt like unfinished business." There, they find Todd as a partial ghost, sporting a permanent hard-on (as important as THAT is) and running from a bright light that's apparently an angel come to take him to Heaven, seeing as he's dead and all. Todd runs for a while, but after Tammy gets hit, he decides that getting her to safety is more important than not going to Heaven and being dead, so after Tammy is safe, he rejoins his dog.
Yes, the fifty pages of dying dog is important for ONE SENTENCE at the end.
I guess, if anything, I found myself actually growing to like Tammy, who initially comes across as a delusional fanatic so centered on this one actor's looks as to make it nearly her entire life (as her husband leaves her in the end, but her fanatical devotion to Todd makes it surprising that she had a husband in the first place). Her fatness is a strange thing to fix on for so much of the book, where nearly every person who speaks to or even sees her can only think about how fat she is, but it's also a little refreshing to have a deliberately unattractive central female character--however shallow she starts out being.
It's just too bad about the rest of the book.
I can't honestly recommend Coldheart Canyon to anyone. I can't even begin to imagine what audience this is for, except MAYBE whoever claims to like the Fifty Shades of Grey books. It's like a particularly trashy trashy romance, with a side of trash in its own trashy collectible trash bin. If you paid money for this, you got robbed. I didn't pay a thing, and I feel robbed. I want my three hours back!
The GOOD news is I figured out the chicken! =9