‘No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering…’
I’ve been wanting to read some Clive Barker for ages, but since most of his most famous works are novellas or short stories, it can be difficult to find an entry point. In the end, I decided to jump straight in with The Hellbound Heart – better known to horror fans as Hellraiser. It didn’t disappoint…
The plot is broadly similar to the film. Frank Cotton is a hedonistic lunatic who has grown bored with earthly pleasures and yearns to experience something extradimensional. After many months of searching, he eventually gets his hands on a puzzle box known as the LeMarchand Configuration, which has the power to summon the Cenobites – a lovely bunch of sadistic, demonic beings who teach Frank not to meddle with things he doesn’t understand. We also meet Frank’s hopelessly dull brother, Rory, his unsettled wife, Julia, and Rory’s work colleague, Kirsty (in the book, Kirsty is Rory’s daughter, which actually makes much more narrative sense).
Pinhead is a marginal figure in the film, despite being the face of the franchise (and what a face!), and he features even less prominently here, but Frank is much more fleshed out (so to speak), and Barker’s evocative and provocative prose still possesses the power to shock even all these years later. This is a novella that is truly unhinged in places and is utterly unafraid to conflate sex and violence and death. It’s a heady mix that would perhaps become overwhelming over the course of a full-length novel, but over 110 pages, it’s utterly captivating.
The Hellbound Heart served as a catalyst for a film franchise that currently has eleven entries and is probably not done yet. Unsurprisingly, then, it’s a wonderful piece of horror writing.