Over many years and many books, Clive Barker has earned a reputation as the thinking person's horror writer. His novels have mixed fantasy, psychology, and sheer creepiness in almost equal quantities, and while the gore quotient remains relatively low, the tension always runs high. In Galilee, however, Barker soft-pedals the ghoulish in favor of the gothic. His novel (or as the author would have it, "romance") tells the tale of two warring families caught up in a disastrous web of corruption, illicit sexuality, and star-crossed love, with a soupçon of the supernatural thrown in as well. On one side are the wealthy Gearys--a fictional stand-in for the Kennedys--and on the other are the Barbarossas, a mysterious black clan that has been around since the time (quite literally) of Adam. Galilee chronicles the twisted course of this centuries-old family feud, which centers around the magical Barbarossa matriarch Cesaria and her son Galilee. Indeed, it's the latter figure--one part Heathcliff to one part Christ--whose relationship with the Geary women sets a match to the entire powder keg of hostility and resentment. Mixing standard clichés of romance with his own peculiarly deep-fried version of the Southern gothic, Baker has come up with an intelligent and shamelessly amusing potboiler.
Book Description
As rich as the Rockefellers, as powerful and glamorous as the Kennedys, the Geary dynasty has held subtle sway over American life since the end of the Civil War. But they are a family with secrets. Dark, terrible secrets about the roots of their influence, which the Gearys have successfully concealed over the generations. Little do the Gearys understand that their world is about to shatter when an innocent young woman enters their glittering fold. Rachel Pallenberg never dreamed she'd ever meet--much less marry--the most eligible bachelor in America, Mitchell Geary. Swept off her feet by this all-American prince, Rachel falls madly in love, lost in a romantic dream that ends with their wedding day. Though she knows she is marrying into an extraordinary family, Rachel is not prepared for the nightmare she faces when she begins to uncover the secret life of the Geary clan.
For the Gearys are a family at war. And their adversaries are the members of another dynasty--the Barbarossa family, whose origins lie not in history but in myth, a family whose influence is felt not in Washington or on Wall Street but in the intense, sensual exchanges of flesh and soul.
When the prodigal prince of the Barbarossa clan, Galilee, who sails the world, seldom setting foot on land, meets Rachel, they fall in love--an all--encompassing passion that unleashed the long-simmering enmity between the families. Old insanities arise, old adulteries are uncovered, and what seemed to be a great American success story begins to erode, exposing its unholy roots...
Galilee is an epic from a master storyteller at the peak of his creative career, mingling powerful realism with the eroticism, magic, and grand metaphysical visions for which Barker is known worldwide. He stunningly encompasses the themes of his greatest works in this masterpiece: a tale of intertwined bloodlines that reflect our own divided selves. The battle between the Gearys and the Barbarossas is a battle between the human and the divine, between the natural and the supernatural. And as such, it reflects the struggle played out in every one of us, as we struggle to comprehend the mystical possibilities in our secret souls.
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