Tonight, Again

by Clive Barker

Tonight, Again marks Clive Barker's first collection since The Books of Blood over 25 years ago. It contains more than twenty primarily erotic short stories and vignettes, along with explicit illustrations by the author in his signature style. As an exploration of extremes, in lush prose and evocative images, Tonight, Again is not to be missed by the author's many fans.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Poetry, Fiction, Erotica, Audiobook

118 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2015

About the author

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School, he studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University and his picture now hangs in the entrance hallway to the Philosophy Department. It was in Liverpool in 1975 that he met his first partner, John Gregson, with whom he lived until 1986. Barker's second long-term relationship, with photographer David Armstrong, ended in 2009.

In 2003, Clive Barker received The Davidson/Valentini Award at the 15th GLAAD Media Awards. This award is presented "to an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individual who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for any of those communities". While Barker is critical of organized religion, he has stated that he is a believer in both God and the afterlife, and that the Bible influences his work.

Fans have noticed of late that Barker's voice has become gravelly and coarse. He says in a December 2008 online interview that this is due to polyps in his throat which were so severe that a doctor told him he was taking in ten percent of the air he was supposed to have been getting. He has had two surgeries to remove them and believes his resultant voice is an improvement over how it was prior to the surgeries. He said he did not have cancer and has given up cigars. On August 27, 2010, Barker underwent surgery yet again to remove new polyp growths from his throat. In early February 2012 Barker fell into a coma after a dentist visit led to blood poisoning. Barker remained in a coma for eleven days but eventually came out of it. Fans were notified on his Twitter page about some of the experience and that Barker was recovering after the ordeal, but left with many strange visions.

Barker is one of the leading authors of contemporary horror/fantasy, writing in the horror genre early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories (collected in Books of Blood 1 – 6), and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game (1985). Later he moved towards modern-day fantasy and urban fantasy with horror elements in Weaveworld (1987), The Great and Secret Show (1989), the world-spanning Imajica (1991) and Sacrament (1996), bringing in the deeper, richer concepts of reality, the nature of the mind and dreams, and the power of words and memories.

Barker has a keen interest in movie production, although his films have received mixed receptions. He wrote the screenplays for Underworld (aka Transmutations – 1985) and Rawhead Rex (1986), both directed by George Pavlou. Displeased by how his material was handled, he moved to directing with Hellraiser (1987), based on his novella The Hellbound Heart. His early movies, the shorts The Forbidden and Salome, are experimental art movies with surrealist elements, which have been re-released together to moderate critical acclaim. After his film Nightbreed (Cabal), which was widely considered to be a flop, Barker returned to write and direct Lord of Illusions. Barker was an executive producer of the film Gods and Monsters, which received major critical acclaim.

Barker is a prolific visual artist working in a variety of media, often illustrating his own books. His paintings have been seen first on the covers of his official fan club magazine, Dread, published by Fantaco in the early Nineties, as well on the covers of the collections of his plays, Incarnations (1995) and Forms of Heaven (1996), as well as on the second printing of the original UK publications of his Books of Blood series.

A longtime comics fan, Barker achieved his dream of publishing his own superhero books when Marvel Comics launched the Razorline imprint in 1993. Based on detailed premises, titles and lead characters he created specifically for this, the four interrelated titles — set outside the Marvel universe — were Ectokid,

Reviews

[Hail Hydra! ~Dave Anderson~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was one game he had that now and again I still remember, and when I do—whatever the circumstances—I invariably end up playing it. You don’t need another player. You don’t need to speak, or even move. You just sit and look at the room you’re in and wonder what you would do with the objects in that room to get sexual pleasure. The less promising the object, of course, the more satisfying it is when you work out some way to put it to erotic purpose. In this game, there are no limitations on the nature of the activity. It can be any shade of perversion: bondage, flagellation, old-fashioned masochism. Just as long as you’re a little more awake to the world when you finish than when you started, then you won.

[Gerhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Celebrated horror writer Clive Barker dons his Marquis de Sade hat and cock ring to give his readers an extraordinary glimpse into polymorphous perversion in this intimate collection of vignettes, poems, stories, illustrations and musings.

By turns erotic and demented, this is a wonderful side of Barker that his gorier horror novels often conceal: the tender hedonist, who muses on love and life, while his heart is slowly eclipsed by his own wildest compulsions.

[Espen Aukan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Clive Barker’s writing, and have really missed his short stories. This collection is not his best work, but this edition from SST Publications is wonderful. The (very) short stories and short poems range from ok to brilliant, but the illustrations is what makes this edition something else. If you are a Barker fan you won’t be disappointed. But this collection may not be for everyone.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beastly rub and tugs, zucchini al dente, pooties of fire, the stirrup whistler, churchyard fisting figurines, and 17,300 dick pics.

Let the death and begetting begin…

A strangely good collection of shorts and super short shorts. “Strangely good” because I didn’t think I would like it as much as I did not that I didn’t think Clive couldn’t write something good.

Assholes and c**ts and cocks. Violence, love, fucking and torment. It’s Barker, so it’s not a huge surprise that it’s written well. And crude. And f’d up.

And I liked it.

[Vicente Ribes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Como sería la ficción erótica de Clive Barker? Este pequeño libro nos responde la pregunta con relatos cortos y poemas relativos al amor, el sexo y la lujuria. Tenemos desde una reinterpretación del mito de Adán y Eva hasta un retorcimiento sexual de los clásicos cuentos infantiles con una blancanieves que disfruta siendo atrapada por un monstruo. Clive Barker admitió siempre su homosexualidad y me imagino que en los 80 cuando le llego el éxito masivo y el sida hacia estragos no debió de pasar un buen rato. Era un gay que había triunfado con Hellraiser, una historia macabra de terror, vísceras y sexo en cuyas páginas el bueno de Clive no se censuraba nada. Este libro, nos demuestra años después que Barker sigue en sus trece pero que además como en Hellraiser, es capaz de dotar de belleza poética y naturalidad al sexo y el amor.

[Mark Tallen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars* Not my favourite Clive Barker book by a long way, the stories focus on erotica as is the intention of the collection of short stories. The writing is top tier, Clive's prose is very good, he of course is a master storyteller. I recommend reading the stories intermittently rather than in one go, I enjoyed the book more doing it that way. One thing I do admire, the book doesn't seem to be censored, it is very graphic, again that's part of the intention of the stories. Art, should not be censored, I consider fiction an art format. Hats off to the publisher and the author for that.

[Mark R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

****1/2

What a pleasant year-end surprise: a new collection of short stories by Clive Barker. He hinted over the years that he had a number of shorts ready to be published, but "Tonight, Again" came with very little fanfare, at least compared to that accompanying "The Scarlet Gospels," released earlier in 2015. That novel had been hinted at and discussed for so long (a decade or close to it), for Barker fans it came with a lot of expectation.

The pre-release speculation regarding "Scarlet Gospels" may have done more harm than good. While I liked that book a hell of a lot, and will undoubtedly read it again sometime in the coming years, it didn't quite live up to my own expectations. While the slim (155-page) "Tonight, Again" came with little expectation. I'm not saying I'm surprised that thirty years after his last short story collection, Barker still knows how to write brief prose; only that I had no idea what it would be like. Fortunately what we've gotten here is one of the finest modern writers toying with words and ideas, and also ink and paint (it comes with a number of original Barker drawings and paintings), comprising twenty-plus pieces on the topics of "love, lust and everything in between."

So say the words on the cover below the title. And it's an accurate description. Those looking for the dark horror of Barker's "Books of Blood" series may be disappointed. There's certainly horror to be found, but it is not the focus. Lust and sexual curiosities are on full display, accompanied by some images that would never find their way into one of the author's youth-oriented "Abarat" books.

Some of the pieces are very brief; one page is devoted to a three-stanza poem, "I Love You," which begins as a traditional exclamation of love, but ending on a dark, death-invoking note. Another, "Touch the Rod," is a mere nine lines long. One of the longer (thirty or so pages) stories is a fable called "Craw," about a girl experiencing a sexual awakening at the touch of a strange creature that lives in the space between her father's property and the next house. The girl's father and brother get wind of what's going on, and they play out a scene that will be familiar to readers of "Cabal," where the human shows the monster how real monsters behave.

Another story, "The Phone Call," is told completely through dialogue; a woman is called up by an obscene prankster, and in a way turns the tables on him. "Two Views from a Window" is also told in conversation format, as a dog and his disabled owner give back and forth commentary on a sexual liaison occurring in an apartment across the street.

"Tonight, Again" is a great collection of stories, poems, and meditations that prove again that Barker is a master of the written word. Reading some of these pieces you can imagine how much fun he had putting them together. There's a delight in the language itself that if not missing from "Sacrament" is at least not as pronounced. I didn't realize how much I needed a new book of short stories from Barker, but here it is, and I'm damn glad about it. And a high-five to Subterranean Press, for putting out a book whose sparse but beautiful design will look nice on my shelf.

[John J Questore · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've said many, many times that if Stephen King or Clive Barker published their grocery shopping list, I would not only read it, but would buy a collectors edition hardcover if it was available. Well, I would have rather read Clive Barker's grocery list.

This is a collection of short stories and poems - "most of them previously unpublished". There's a very good reason they have been previously unpublished - the editors and publishers have brains in their heads.

I wanted to like this book. When I heard Mr. Barker put pen to paper again, and that it was going to be a collection of short stories, I was ecstatic! I couldn't wait. I immediately pre-ordered it, and kept checking daily for the shipment email. Unfortunately, I should have just picked up my wife's copy of 50 Shades of Grey.

Now, I am far from prudish (a lover of horror can't be), but Tonight, Again is nothing but a perverse collection of hedonistic claptrap that actually made me a little uncomfortable. Now, they say good writing should make the reader uncomfortable - but there's uncomfortable, and there's this. For those looking for the classic "Barker Horror" or "Barker Fantasy", forget this one. Walk away quickly and don't look back.

True fans of Barker know that he doesn't like to be labeled in a specific genre and are OK with that. But never was "Penthouse Forum" writer part of his repertoire (as far as I know). Sexual? Absolutely. That's where he excels in his novels. Disgustingly perverse and just unnecessary? Never, until now.

In addition, while Barker's art isn't for everyone, if I wanted to see that many penis pictures, I'd pick up a copy of Playgirl. It's evident that there was a lot of pent up sexual tension when Clive wrote these stories and painted these pictures. I just think it should have stayed pent up and not brought to fruition in published form.

Were there some good "stories"? Sure. But the rest was not worth the price of admission.

Again, it needs to be said: I own everything the Clive Barker has ever written, all in first edition hard cover (some even signed). As a fan, I'm telling you to skip this one. But like they say, you can please some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

[John Bastin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The sub-heading on this book reads, "Tales of Love, Lust and Everything In Between." Well, after reading it, I'm reminded of the old saying, "I read erotica, you read porn, he reads filthy smut." There is a whole lot more material ranging from porn to "filthy smut" here than there as anything resembling real erotica.

My previous readings of Clive Barker have been as a writer of horror tales, and have revealed a wonderful story-teller with a masterful skill at developing scenes, environments and characters. Unfortunately, he left most to all of those skills behind an opaque partition in this work, revealing only evidence of a "dirty mind" that has none of the features of truly good erotica.

My advice to readers? If you're looking for skillful writing containing some erotica, don't waste your money on this one.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Featuring over 30 short stories and vignettes this collection seems to have been criminally ignored, and that's a shame, as it really is a glorious dip into Barker eroticism.

There are only half a dozen or so, what I'd consider short stories. The remaining tales are all poems and burst of consciousness, with some entries that could actually be passages edited out from longer works.

But none of this matters.

This is crackling Barker prose, packed with sex but never pornographic. Dare I say, most of the text is beautifully describing acts in a way only Clive can. Yes, the odd taboo is touched upon, with only Craw: A Fable giving me issue due to Francesca's age.

Tonight, Again is much more than sex though. Gorgeous story telling proving once again that Clive is the master of short form writing. What I particularly enjoyed was that the text seemed almost confessional at times, deeply personal. A gift shared between Clive and the reader.

I'll end with this beauty entitled...I Love You

I love you
And the noise of strive
Had never silenced what I feel.

I love you,
As a husband loves a wife,
As priests before the altar
Come to kneel

I love you, and I cannot hope
For anything more sweet than this,
That at the end
Of my unfathomed life
You're there to love me into death,
With one last tender kiss.

[Richard Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two downsides-
1. Too short! Great stories and poems, but the book is readable in one sitting.
2. One of the worst covers I've ever seen. Every picture inside the book were better than the choice for the cover.
Othr than those small problems this was a fantastic read and left me wanting more.

[Dalibor Dado Ivanovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barker piše o onako kako se drugi ne usude.
Neke su mi priče baš dojmljive, tipa o ženi koja je malena poput ruke, i priča, čini mi se prva u zbirci sa voćnjakom i bićem koje dolazi gledati djevojku...

[Tressa23 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barker at his best. Dark, sensual, perverse, beautiful. Bradley captures all nuances.

[S.B. (Beauty in Ruins) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tonight, Again is a slender little collection from Clive Barker that slipped out of Subterranean Press last November with little fanfare - and, it pains me to say this, for good reason.

There were a few interesting stories here, and his drawings are always interesting to look at, but there are far too many half-page and single-page entries that amount to nothing more than stream of consciousness narrative snippets. Whereas the original Books of Blood spread 4 stories over 160 pages at their most slender, Barker crams a whopping 32 titles in just 106 pages here.

Feel free to do the math.

The collection opens on a positive note, with Tonight, Again, a short story that serves as a framing device, similar to The Book of Blood in his first collection. Craw: A Fable was an interesting tale with a classic Barker twist in the end, but some readers may be uncomfortable with the sexual interplay between a thirteen-year-old girl and a talking beast.

Martha was a really well-developed story with something of a Firestarter flavor to it (a coming of age tale with pyrotechnics), while Dollie was a darkly realistic favorite (even if I saw the final transformation coming). A Blessing and An Incident at the Nunnery were two of my favorites, with the deliberate juxtaposition of the sacred and the erotic that Barker has always done so well. Finally, Mr. Fred Coady Professes His Undying Love for His Little Sylvia was weirdly erotic, exploring the love between a 28 inch tall woman and a 6 foot 2 inch tall man, but oddly tender for the master of the erotic macabre.

In the end, Tonight, Again has some good stories and a few pieces of art that are worth more than a glance, but even the e-book edition isn't worth the price of admission


Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins

[Skunke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Clive Barker as an author and this is yet another hard to come by book. But goddamn this isn't something you miss out on if you don't read it.
Now, I as a Clive Barker completionist did still read it and I just felt like eh.
The biggest problem I had with Tonight, Again was that it was nowhere near as excellent as The Books of Blood, Barkers last short story collection. I was expecting it to be at least slightly similar in quality and while Barker as always has brilliant prose, I think that the stories in this collection were all very alike and very mediocre all around.
However, the highs in this were quite high still. I enjoyed short stories like the titular "Tonight, Again" which was Barkers body horror at it's finest, "Craw: A Fable" with how weird it was, yet felt like an adult version of The Thief of Always somehow, also a worse version of it. "Martha" felt like a weird, fire version of Jacquelinne Ess and was still good. "Two Views From A Window" was interesting from a writer's POV due to it being just a conversation. No descriptions, no "says", and while it wasn't great, I was fascinated by the form of it. "Unrequinted" was good, but felt like Barker trying to imitate his older style and not doing it nearly as well, however it was still an enjoyable, yet weird read. Lastly, the last short story of this collection I enjoyed was "Mr. Fred Coady Professes His Undying Love For Little Sylvia" with that the ending was incredibly sad and well written.
A happy surprise was that the poems were quite often fairly good, or rather two of them were good the rest were meh. The best ones were "If The Pen Is The P3nis" and "I Have My Art". I also did slightly enjoy "A Monster Lies in Wait" but it wasn't as good.

So all in all, I think this is so far my least favorite of Clive Barkers works. 2.5 out of 5.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important book for collectors of Clive's work but not a book for the casual reader. This book features 30 shorts and vignettes that are mostly erotic in nature.

A raft of the shorts are more streams of conscious. Gorgeous prose throughout but merely quick reads which won't have you swinging from the chandeliers. Saying that, there are a good half a dozen shorts that are brilliant, classic Barker. Incredible imagery and overflowing with eroticism. These shorts make this a must for anyone interested in the works of the Master.

Those shorts were...

Tonight, Again.
Craw: A Fable.
Afraid.
Martha.
Dollie.
Two Views From A Window.
Mr Fred Coady Professes His Undying Love For His Little Sylvia.

I'd have liked a bit more information on when these stories were written as I'm sure there are some really early works here and some background would have made this a better collection in understanding where Clive was in his life.

For me this is a wonderful collection and one I'll return to again. But be warned it is incredibly explicit at times and can touch on a few taboos.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting how Barker can write adult-themed stories/erotica AND write tales like 'Abarat'... some intriguing ideas in here, if you really pay close attention, but this could have been written by anyone in the genre of erotica so i am duly unimpressed... no sense of it being Clive's work, nothing weird/imaginative... what honestly came to mind is this series of tales being a script for an S&M-horror-snuff film... plenty of details to titillate and stimulate and provoke... a book more for completists than casual fans, since it bears no hallmarks of Barker besides the drawings, which are typically otherworldly and creepy...

[David Ward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dejected and let down. I was so eager to read this. It just seemed to me a hot jumbled chaotic mess, which usually Clive can make work. Not so much in this one. It pains me to give a Barker book 2 stars. Salacious, lecherous...not in a good or interesting way though. Seemed like he was just bored or disinterested. Writing something just to write it.

[Paul Flewitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a curious collection of pastiches, poems and singular scenes from unpublished works. Typical Barker, mixing horror, sex and grotesquery in equal measure. Not one for first time Barker readers, but there's plenty of interest for committed enthusiasts.

[Tressa23 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barker at his best. Dark, sensual, perverse, beautiful.

[Roan24 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disturbing but thats the point, stil didnt like it.

[Tyler Burnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the "Dead dove: do not eat" meme, but the bag says "Clive Barker gets even more sexual"

[Rajeev Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of it is very short fiction, verse or short essays that left me pining for more. There are only glimmerings of the Clive Barker I know and these pieces might have been written in an offhand manner, like a page in the personal diary in the evening. The drawings are casual too: crude depictions of erotic thoughts on the spur of the moment, generally phallic, but some of them may have a deeper interpretation which I missed. There are some memorable lines, like this one:

A monster lies in wait in me,
A stew of wounds and misery,
But fiercer still in life and limb,
The me that lies in wait in him.

I want and expect more from Clive Barker. A legion of his fans do.

[Raphaël Rousseau · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a great collection of short stories by Clive Barker. It included also a few poems. Theses are erotic tales, for the most part. Most of the time, we are far from his horror fiction. On the whole, a very good book. I had already read the story Dollie in an anthology edited by richard Chizmar. I do recommend this book to literature lovers.

[Raphaël Rousseau · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a collection of erotic tales by clive barker. very well written and well told. one of the stories has already been published. Recommended to readers who like their meal spicy...
a very good collection may be a bit short.

[Tyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Clive's but I've found his later books to be very average - this one included. I'm not a big fan of short stories and these were too short to hold any interest for me.

[Jason Bergman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A new short story collection by Clive Barker (his first since the Books of Blood!) is cause for celebration. But this very slim collection isn't his best material. There are some highlights, and I especially liked a couple of the poems. But it's not essential reading.