The Thief of Always
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
The Thief of Always
by Clive Barker
Review by Jonny Zetterström
Clive Barker, born in Liverpool in 1952, is the bestselling author of Imajica and The Great And Secret Show. He also “illustrates, writes, directs and produces for the stage and screen”.
The story is a pretty unusual one; it’s about a boy named Harvey Swick who is very bored by life itself. Something you understand from the beginning since the first sentence is “The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive”. But then some creature comes and takes him away to the Holiday house of mr Wood. It is a very funny place and everything seems great, in the beginning that is. But after a while he starts to realize that it isn’t at all the paradise he first thought it was. So the real story is about his struggle to try to defeat mr Hood and get home to his parents. If he succeeds? Well, read the book.
When you read the book you get a very special feeling. It feels like if you were reading a book for children, but it is definitely not such a book. Everything is seen from a child’s point of view. The author somehow manages to get a feeling of horror through the lovely descriptions of Christmas and even lovelier presents. Even though everything seems to be all right and happy, you, as a reader, get the feeling that something is terribly wrong.
All that can’t be said better than “In a tale that manages to be both cute and horrifying, bestselling novelist and screenwriter Barker put the dark side back into childhood fantasy” as Publishers Weekly did it.
The authors own illustrations is a very good description of each chapter comming, but you don’t understand what it illustrates until you’ve read the chapter. The illustrations is of a very high class and in some strange way they are both ugly and beautiful in the same time. Just as the book.
This is a book that I recommend for everyone capable of reading. And when you have finished the book, why don’t you ask yourself whether it really happened or not.