Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Oct. 20th, 2007 05:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Dracula
Author: Bram Stoker
Editor: Maurice Hindle
Published: New York: Penguin Classics, 2003 (1897)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 454
Total Page Count: 43,176
Text Number: 125
Read For: personal enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to arrange for an English home purchase for Count Dracula, he becomes a prisoner in Dracula's castle and discovers horrific and unnatural facts about Dracula himself. Not long after, strange events occur in England—a unmanned ship beaches on shore, a madman awaits his master, and a young woman with unexplained puncture wounds on her neck becomes pale and ill. These events bring together a diverse cast of characters who tell the story through their diaries and letters and work to understand and to defeat Dracula. The diary-style narrative, although contrived and somewhat frustrating, makes the book accessible and swift flowing, and the book is of course a rich, classic horror text and a foundational vampire novel. Recommended to all readers, including those that don't generally read classics.
A horror classic, Dracula is both an atmospheric, foundational vampire novel and an accessible, swiftly flowing text. The narrative is composed of a number of chronologically arranged diary entries and sundry letters and clippings that follows a cast of approximately seven characters through one united plot. The diary-style narrative means that the book is composed largely of many short entires within average-length chapters, and these short entries make the book accessible to all readers and make it flow swiftly. As such, this is a good book for readers that don't often read classics (and the footnotes answer any question in period locations and phrases). The letters and diary entires are also personal, honest, and detailed, building realistic characters and meaningful emotions. However, the narrative style has two weaknesses: it's contrived, although there are sections that describe how and why the entires were chronologically arranged, and more importantly it puts the reader in the position of knowing much more than the characters, especially in the first half of the book. This dramatic irony becomes quite exaggerated as the reader, overlooking the entire story, can clearly see the danger, while the characters still bumble about in the dark, constricted to their own points of view—and the more exaggerated the dramatic irony, the more obvious and more frustrating it becomes. On the whole, however, the diary narrative is an effective storytelling style.
And the story itself is exceptional. Stoker intertwines the horror of the unholy undead with the draw of power, sensuality, and beautiful young women. He engages both in equal measure: his vampires are at once grotesque and amazing, from Dracula's pale face, garish red lips, and inhuman animalistic tendencies to the seductive and rawly sexuality beauty of his brides and the growing sensuality of the human women that he seduces and transforms. (Furthermore, the mythology that surrounds the vampires, from garlic to daylight, will be immediately recognizable to modern readers.) Alongside these inhuman forces is a cast of realistically conceived and motivated humans, originally brought together through love and friendship, ultimately united due to Dracula and in order to destroy him. Through the diary entires, the story moves at an equal pace through emotions and plot, the Victorian descriptions are rich and detailed, the horror elements are atmospheric and intense. This is truly a fundamental vampire novel.
I'm glad that I finally got around to reading Dracula, and I was very pleased with the text. It is lengthy, sometimes predictable, sometimes (although primarily because of the narration) frustrating, but on the whole it is also a compulsively readable, detailed, atmospheric, and core horror text. I recommend it to a diverse audience: horror/fantasy/vampire fans, classics fans, and also readers that don't often read classics, who I believe will find the writing style approachable and easy to understand. The Penguin Classics edition includes supplementary material, including footnotes that help clear up confusion, and an introduction and appendixes that provide more information for the curious reader. Very high recommended.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
Author: Bram Stoker
Editor: Maurice Hindle
Published: New York: Penguin Classics, 2003 (1897)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 454
Total Page Count: 43,176
Text Number: 125
Read For: personal enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to arrange for an English home purchase for Count Dracula, he becomes a prisoner in Dracula's castle and discovers horrific and unnatural facts about Dracula himself. Not long after, strange events occur in England—a unmanned ship beaches on shore, a madman awaits his master, and a young woman with unexplained puncture wounds on her neck becomes pale and ill. These events bring together a diverse cast of characters who tell the story through their diaries and letters and work to understand and to defeat Dracula. The diary-style narrative, although contrived and somewhat frustrating, makes the book accessible and swift flowing, and the book is of course a rich, classic horror text and a foundational vampire novel. Recommended to all readers, including those that don't generally read classics.
A horror classic, Dracula is both an atmospheric, foundational vampire novel and an accessible, swiftly flowing text. The narrative is composed of a number of chronologically arranged diary entries and sundry letters and clippings that follows a cast of approximately seven characters through one united plot. The diary-style narrative means that the book is composed largely of many short entires within average-length chapters, and these short entries make the book accessible to all readers and make it flow swiftly. As such, this is a good book for readers that don't often read classics (and the footnotes answer any question in period locations and phrases). The letters and diary entires are also personal, honest, and detailed, building realistic characters and meaningful emotions. However, the narrative style has two weaknesses: it's contrived, although there are sections that describe how and why the entires were chronologically arranged, and more importantly it puts the reader in the position of knowing much more than the characters, especially in the first half of the book. This dramatic irony becomes quite exaggerated as the reader, overlooking the entire story, can clearly see the danger, while the characters still bumble about in the dark, constricted to their own points of view—and the more exaggerated the dramatic irony, the more obvious and more frustrating it becomes. On the whole, however, the diary narrative is an effective storytelling style.
And the story itself is exceptional. Stoker intertwines the horror of the unholy undead with the draw of power, sensuality, and beautiful young women. He engages both in equal measure: his vampires are at once grotesque and amazing, from Dracula's pale face, garish red lips, and inhuman animalistic tendencies to the seductive and rawly sexuality beauty of his brides and the growing sensuality of the human women that he seduces and transforms. (Furthermore, the mythology that surrounds the vampires, from garlic to daylight, will be immediately recognizable to modern readers.) Alongside these inhuman forces is a cast of realistically conceived and motivated humans, originally brought together through love and friendship, ultimately united due to Dracula and in order to destroy him. Through the diary entires, the story moves at an equal pace through emotions and plot, the Victorian descriptions are rich and detailed, the horror elements are atmospheric and intense. This is truly a fundamental vampire novel.
I'm glad that I finally got around to reading Dracula, and I was very pleased with the text. It is lengthy, sometimes predictable, sometimes (although primarily because of the narration) frustrating, but on the whole it is also a compulsively readable, detailed, atmospheric, and core horror text. I recommend it to a diverse audience: horror/fantasy/vampire fans, classics fans, and also readers that don't often read classics, who I believe will find the writing style approachable and easy to understand. The Penguin Classics edition includes supplementary material, including footnotes that help clear up confusion, and an introduction and appendixes that provide more information for the curious reader. Very high recommended.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
