Publishing House: Sonzogno
Author: Clive Barker
ISBN Code: 88-454-2310-7
Pages: 392
Price: 18 euros
Candy Quackenbush lives in Pollipoli, a seedy Minnesota town centered entirely on raising chickens and processing their meat. But Pollipoli does not like Candy: there is an unemployed, alcoholic father who beats her, an unhappy mother who is a mute bystander, and an imagination--Candy's--absolutely different from that of all her peers and fellow citizens, so focused on chickens, chickens, and more chickens. Candy is a dreamer; her world, if there is one, is not the same aridly inhabited by all other people.
And so one day Candy Quackenbush is sucked out of the Izabella Sea and taken to Abarat, an archipelago consisting of twenty-five islands. On each island is crystallized an hour of the day, plus the twenty-fifth which is the mysterious Time Out of Time. In the succession of her vicissitudes Candy encounters a carnival of creatures between nightmare and dream, inconceivable rules and worlds -- yet grotesquely similar to "our own." But there is more to it than that, for island after island Candy discovers herself to be a key pawn in the intricate Clash. Not between good and evil, but between the old Darkness and a new Light, artificial and no more reassuring than its nemesis.
Lovecraft in fabula.
I'm probably exaggerating, but if what you love about the Solitaire is the escape from reality, the intrinsic beauty of fantasy... then a parallel between this book and the horror tales of the beloved Howard will not sound so far-fetched. Because this first installment of the quadrilogy is marvelous, even those who love darker fiction will find bread for their teeth: the terrible Requiax, mammoth monsters ready to rise from the abyss to bring eternal night to the archipelago (he had called them Ancients...), or Carrion, a midnight sire who lives by breathing nightmares, and again the Stitchers, monstrous rag warriors animated by mud and voodoo.
While waiting to read the second book-already available-and to admire Barker's illustrations to the first, I highly recommend this Alice in the Dark version to all you lovers of the dark and, generalizing, to all survivors who still believe in imagination and its magic.
Let us enjoy the time we have left before the TV-God swallows everything up.
Abarat may be one of the last silver keys.
Review by Editor
