Review: Rawhead Rex

What a blood-chilling story. There's a good reason Clive Barker is known as one of the masters of horror. "Rawhead Rex," published in the third volume of Barker's massive anthology, Books of Blood, is the first story I've read of his, but it certainly won't be the last. Horror writers everywhere, take note. This is how you give a good scare.

I should confess now: when I started reading the story, I was reading the graphic novel adaptation, so much of the imagery that has stuck with me in my nightmares is derived from the illustrations of Les Edwards and Hector Gomez. I switched to the text-only version about a third of the way through (and re-read from the beginning) once I realized that this week's Writers Workshop of Horror essay was on setting and description. A great deal of credit is due to the artists for depicting Rawhead in full color without losing any of his horror—but since I'm a writer, I wanted to be able to see how Barker pulled off the feat with no illustrations to speak of.

So. How does Barker wield the all-important tools of setting and description to make me double-check my doors at night before I go to sleep?

What it comes down to is a surprising but devastatingly effective combination of casual distance and unabashed gore in his narrative descriptions. The entire story takes place from an omniscient third person POV—of a sort. It's difficult to identify a protagonist, and much of the violence is described as a matter of fact rather than laden with emotional significance. We do get glimpses into Rawhead's head, as well as several of his victims', but we jump around so frequently that we never really sink into one perspective as the outright protagonist's. Instead, Barker treats each perspective with that sort of casual distance that makes it feel almost disposable—we get to know a character just well enough that we are gut-punched when their head is suddenly torn off, but at the same time briefly enough that we almost begin to wonder, "What really is the value of these single human lives, anyway?" It's a chilling effect.

Barker works a similar effect on the setting of the story, mixing a nonchalant, almost humdrum tone with language packed with mentions of violence. If he had aired too far on the side of nonchalance, the story could have come off almost tongue-in-cheek, a la Good Omens, but he keeps it just close enough to the other side, resulting in a disturbing effect rather than a comedic one. Take the first paragraph, for example:

Of all the conquering armies that had tramped the streets of Zeal down the centuries, it was finally the mild tread of the Sunday tripper that brought the village to its knees. It had suffered Roman legions, and the Norman Conquest, it had survived the agonies of civil war, all without losing its identity to the occupying forces. But after centuries of boot and blade it was to be the tourists—the new barbarians—that bested Zeal, their weapons courtesy and hard cash.

I'll take my cue from G. Cameron Fuller's WWoH essay, "A Claustrophobic Locked in an Isolated Room: The Power of Setting and Description in Horror Fiction," and highlight in blue the words that give that first paragraph a more mundane tone and in red the words that foreshadow horror. I loved this first paragraph for its humor—wry and dry is the way I like it—but it's easy to see that the horror outweighs the humor here. I would argue that Barker has pulled off his gambit and perfectly calculated the level of banality that, rather than make the tone farcical, chills the reader's sympathies for both the town of Zeal and its conquerors.

I haven't even begun to discuss Rawhead himself or his atrocities. This is a bit on purpose, since I can't forget the illustrations enough to discuss the text without bias, but also because I'm left after finishing the story with a greater sense of dread towards the town of Zeal than towards the monster that ravaged it. Maybe that's due to the strength of the writing, too—Rawhead is not over-described, he and his actions depicted with just enough detail to let the imagination run wild. Still, I found those first few pages so powerful in conjuring up a vision of the conquered and re-conquered town that Rawhead felt less like a monster than the avenging hand of fate.

I've gone on quite a bit so I'll say that's all for this week. I'll sign off with a word of thanks to Clive Barker for setting my horror standards significantly higher than they've been. If you haven't read him, give it a shot! Just make sure to double-check your door before you go to bed tonight.


Citations: Barker, Clive. "Rawhead Rex." Books of Blood. Vol. 3, Kindle ed., Crossroad Press, 2013.

Fuller, G. Cameron. "A Claustrophobic Locked in an Isolated Room: The Power of Setting and Description in Horror Fiction." Writers Workshop of Horror, edited by Michael Knost, Woodland Press, 2010, pp. 81-90.