PJr recommended. Very much out of the norm for my reading list. Notwithstanding: very compelling, I was carried along by the story. It made me very nervous at certain spots, especially when it was so obvious what was going on with female victim #2 and the male would-be protectors remained oblivious. Victorian feel.The introduction had interesting history on vampires - which were not new in literature in 1897 - but this book popularized them. The genre is stronger than ever as of 2012. The introduction recounted the story of Lord Byron and friends in Swiss Alps killing time by writing ghost stories - resulting in Frankenstein and The Vampyre: A Tale. I saw the silent film Nosferatu several years ago - creepy, very well done - and now I know the term.
Very effective method of story-telling - Stoker used the device of a series of entries from diaries, journals, letters, legal documents, newspaper clippings - resulting in different voices, different perspectives, sometimes we as readers knew more than the writer of the document would have. This really worked well.
Romania and environs - tough, wild.
As always: this book is much more interesting for having read other stuff, such as this (overview and history of the general area) and this (discussing Ottoman incursions through the area).
There's even a character named Van Helsing! I had no idea it all started here.
No comments:
Post a Comment