Book Box
For anyone interested. I can't believe they banned this book. But it doesn't suit the white man's agenda. . .
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Deservedly a classic, by an otherwise undistinguished writer, at least in the greater scheme of literary history. (His only other works that anyone really remembers are The Jewel of the Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm, the latter of which tends to be regarded as terrible by those who dare to read it.) The stroke of genius in Dracula is its epistolary structure, making it a bit like what Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone was to the detective genre.
You don’t need me to recount the plot for you, so it’ll suffice to say that lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to assist with the affairs of soon-to-be-emigrating Count Dracula, only to discover that the Count is a little too enamoured of the music of the night… The narrative is composed of various first-person documents by characters from Jonathan to his wife Mina Harker, occult scholar Dr Van Helsing, asylum director Dr Seward, and newspaper journalists whose articles paint a picture of vampiric shenanigans once the Count comes to London.
The epistolary style adds a verisimilitude that really works in the novel’s favour and is likely a large part of why it became so embedded in the public imagination, combined with Stoker’s obvious research into vampire myths and legends. The combination of these elements makes the book feel like a work of scholarship, almost, as if you’re reading a genuine history rather than an occult thriller. There’s always something happening in the plot and even despite the more melodramatic moments - you can see Stoker’s origins as a writer of moral fiction in his heavily strictured presentation of gender (men are protectors, women are helpmeets) - its suspense holds up all the way.
Perhaps most importantly, the horror set pieces still work. I can’t speak for all readers, of course, but I still get a horrible thrill from things like the woman who arrives at Castle Dracula to cry for her stolen child, the “Bloofer lady” that lures and attacks London children at night, and the stipulation that one must sever a vampire victim’s head and stuff its mouth with garlic to stop “the un-dead” coming back. Stoker might not have written a better or even an equal book, but his legacy was rightly assured by Dracula.
Rating: 4/4
more reviews at thelibraryatborleyrectory.uk
