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Elizabeth Gleick (review date 1987)

SOURCE: Gleick, Elizabeth. Review of In the Flesh, by Clive Barker. New York Times Book Review (15 February 1987): 20.

[In the following review, Gleick observes that the stories included in In the Flesh are ingenious and intelligent, and effectively play upon unconscious human terrors.]

Those staples of recent American horror tales are nowhere to be found in the four novellas here [in In the Flesh]; this prize-winning British author has no need for bloody limbs or disembodied heads, for ax murderers or nubile camp counselors. Instead, Clive Barker plays upon our unconscious terrors—a man transmutes into a woman after a strange sexual encounter, leaderless world governments are on the verge of running amok, a man realizes he has the potential to commit murder—and also on our innate fascination with the lurid. The author has not selected his victims arbitrarily; they are naturally...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Michael Morrison (review date 1985)
   2. Michael A. Morrison (review date 1985)
   3. Chris Morgan (review date 1985)
   4. Fleming Meeks (review date 1986)
   5. Douglas E. Winter (review date 1986)
   6. Ken Tucker (review date 1986)
   7. Michael A. Morrison (review date 1986)
   8. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1986)
   9. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1986)
   10. Cosette Keis (review date 1987)
   11. Elizabeth Gleick (review date 1987)
   12. Laurence Coven (review date 1987)
   13. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1987)
   14. Science Fiction Chronicle (review date 1989)
   15. Ken Anderson (review date 1989)
   16. Craig William Burns (essay date 1993)
   17. Gary Hoppenstand (essay date 1994)
   18. Linda Badley (essay date 1996)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright