-
Welcome
to BookAndReader! We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!
Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.
Clive Barker: The Hellbound Heart
- Thread starter Darren
- Start date
Jenem
kickbox
wow - i'm the first in here, eh?
i read The Hellbound Heart yesterday. it isn't one of my favorite Barker novels (novella). i enjoyed it but i was left hungry.
i wish Barker would have delved into the characters more. i was a bit confused by Julia's position. Frank thought she had no choice in her situation (being in a loveless marriage) but this is modern times and she wasn't an unselfish woman; if she was that miserable why didn't she leave Rory? and how could she not have been completely freaked out when she saw gory Frank for the first time in the wall? maybe i missed something. and where did the Cenobites come from? how did they come to be? i was left with all these questions afterward.
i don't think Clive Barker is the kind of author who can write a novella because his ideas are too big to be contained in a short story. i understand the message about greed and lust and the consequences etc, but i need MORE than that in a story.
i still love Barker though
i read The Hellbound Heart yesterday. it isn't one of my favorite Barker novels (novella). i enjoyed it but i was left hungry.
i wish Barker would have delved into the characters more. i was a bit confused by Julia's position. Frank thought she had no choice in her situation (being in a loveless marriage) but this is modern times and she wasn't an unselfish woman; if she was that miserable why didn't she leave Rory? and how could she not have been completely freaked out when she saw gory Frank for the first time in the wall? maybe i missed something. and where did the Cenobites come from? how did they come to be? i was left with all these questions afterward.
i don't think Clive Barker is the kind of author who can write a novella because his ideas are too big to be contained in a short story. i understand the message about greed and lust and the consequences etc, but i need MORE than that in a story.
i still love Barker though
Litany
Active Member
Read this on Saturday. Very short read. If you've seen the film already then there isn't much point in reading it as they're pretty much identical. As Jenem says there's no real character development, but then it is only a novella. If it was bound with other stories in the same volume then it probably wouldn't be as disappointing, but because you've got this one story bound up as a single book I think it leaves you expecting a bit more from it.
It could have been padded out a bit more, but because I've seen the film so many times I found myself relying on that for the images more than on the words. Probably a very different read if you've never seen the film. I think I'd probably regard it more as an over-long short story, if that makes any sense. Novellas tend to have a bit more substance to them, this was definitely more of a short story read.
It could have been padded out a bit more, but because I've seen the film so many times I found myself relying on that for the images more than on the words. Probably a very different read if you've never seen the film. I think I'd probably regard it more as an over-long short story, if that makes any sense. Novellas tend to have a bit more substance to them, this was definitely more of a short story read.
Anamnesis
Active Member
This was the first book/story by Clive Barker that I read in its entirety, having read only parts of The Thief of Always. The ideas were good but due to its minimal length they were too contained. Had Barker turned this into a full-length novel, I probably would have enjoyed it more.