Dracula

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Summary: Bram Stokers Dracula
Review: Bram Stokers Dracula is written in the form of journal entries and letters. At the begining of each entry there is a title telling who is writing the entry, this makes the book easy to follow because you know who is talking. There is also alot of suspence in the book that keeps you hooked from one page to the next. Even though the book can be dark it also have emotions thoughout the book.

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Summary: A classic full of obsession, loyalty, and evil.
Review: I recently finished reading Bram Stoker's Dracula and found it to be a very enticing. I was filled with much misconception before reading this novel because of all of the movies out there that never seem to quite follow the book they are basing it on. I thought the book gave a lot of feel and it almost seemed personal, as though the letters in the character's journals really are personally for each reader. I normally am not a fan of books that are written in that way, but I seemed to forget quite often that I was reading someone's journal. The story line is very creative, and I especially enjoyed it because I believe that Bram Stoker got his idea to write about Dracula, from Vlad Tepes II who took on the name Dracula after his father had taken the nickname Dracul. To me, it made the book far more interesting. Some things were just a tad bit too dark for my taste, but other than that... the characters were developed very well. It is a fantasy, so everything is going to be unrealistic, such as the characters not having many flaws to show forth. I was curious to know more about Dracula, and how he became the way he did. Overall this is a great book and I encourage anyone who doesn't mind lots of gore, to really dig into this book. It is suspenseful and it sends chills up and down your spine.

I personally think that although this story will remain an unforgettable classic... there should be something written about the real Dracula, Vlad Tepes.

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Summary: Creepy, especially the beginning
Review: Stoker's classic is certainly worth the read. It's tame by today's standards for a horror tale but there are still quite a few moments of strong suspense. The young solicitor Jonathan Harker is sent to Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the paperwork necessary to purchase an estate in London. Dracula initially seems like a nice enough guy, but Harker soon discovers some terrifying details of his lifestyle. This first section of the book contains some of the best horror ever written! The second part of the book takes place in Yorkshire, where the Count has alighted after leaving Transylvania. The action continues as a new bunch of characters put their heads together to finally establish what the Count is. In addition, we see firsthand what happens to a vampire's victim. The rest of the book takes place in London and then eastern Europe.

The characters are well-developed but don't really have any flaws, which seemed quite unrealistic to me. Dracula is portrayed very well but only appears in a handful of dramatic scenes. I wish Stoker had made him show up a few more times, perhaps focusing a bit on his character during the day when he isn't out for blood. The story is told entirely in hindsight through journal entries by the major characters. This unique style of narration has its merits (e.g. it's easy to describe the same events with different points of view) and Stoker handles it very well, but on the whole I would have preferred straight single viewpoint narration or perhaps third person omnicient.

Dracula is a fairly long book, with the Penguin edition weighing in at nearly 500 pages. Though the story never really dragged for me, I feel that a couple parts of the novel could have been condensed, e.g. the mission in London to find and destroy the Count or the events dealing with Dr. Seward's wacko mental patient. Minor nitpicks aside, Stoker's writing and plotting are first-rate and easily allow this one to attain the status of "classic". Overall, a gem of a novel!

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Summary: Unforgettable -- but tedious
Review: Dracula really existed. The old legend has at its core a historical figure: Vlad Tepes, the impaler, a 15th century Transylvanian nobleman noted for making kebabs out of captured Turkish soldiers.

The legend of Dracula will probably outlive the works of Dickens and Tolstoy, but the life of the real Vlad Tepes -- if it could be written -- was probably more interesting than this tepid, late-Victorian novel that takes place mostly in England. The best part of the book is the first 50 pages: Jonathan Harker's journal of his visit to Transylvania and his frightening encounter with Dracula. The rest of the book could be condensed by one-half and even then it wouldn't be all that exciting or frightening.

So, read the book because the story of Dracula is hugely important in popular culture -- but don't expect too much.

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Summary: Gripping, multi-layered novel retains the power to chill
Review: Dracula may be an iconic figure in film and television, but his appeal is not diminished in print. This truly is a wonderful, absorbing read; I enjoyed it far more than I expected to. Stoker's prose is pleasantly easy to read (although the footnotes do come in handy for some of the more obscure references to medieval eastern European history).

The narrative is generally well-paced, only occasionally sagging under the weight of unnecessary scene-setting and backstory. It is told from a multitude of viewpoints with an almost postmodern attention to point-of-view distortions. This device also goes a considerable way towards breathing real life into the engaging characters.

The story is a familiar one, of course, particularly to anyone who has seen the 1992 film version. With Coppola's slightly salacious additions stripped away (Lucy is a giddy charmer here rather than a perpetually-tipsy flirt, for example), this is an often stark tale, redolent with folkloric eerieness, as fin-de-siecle scientific triumphalism battles vainly against an older, altogether darker set of laws.

However many versions of the story you've seen, _Dracula_ remains a surprisingly rich and unnerving read - all the richer, indeed, for the cultural resonance it has picked up since it was first published. We have seen Jonathan Harker reach his slow realisation of the true nature of the Count countless times, yet this knowing shiver only adds to the creeping unease when Harker first enters Dracula's castle.

This a gem of a novel, waiting to be rediscovered.

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Summary: The original; the best
Review: So you think you know all about Dracula? Seen the dozens of movies, including the badly misnamed "Bram Stoker's Dracula". Read the hundreds of vampire novels? Big fan of "Buffy"? Tired of the subject? Even if you can say yes to any of the above, going back to the original novel will be well worth your while. Although the vampire legend goes back centuries in many cultures,it took an obscure writer in late 19th century England named Bram Stoker to create the basis for the most enduring and pervasive of horror characters. At times, the dialogue is almost ludicrous (where in the world did Stoker get the idea of how Americans talk?), the plot drags a little in the middle, the language is often too flowery and ornate for 21st century tastes but if you read this novel with some suspension of our modern tastes (and don't play amateur psychologist and try to overanalyse it), it is a great story. Love, horror, history, culture, suspense, action - this book has it all and even the best movie, book and/or miniseries has yet to fully do it justice. The characters of the Count and Van Helsing are written so well that it is easy to see why they are classics, but most of the other characters - especially Johnathan and Mina Harker - are also memorable. The best of the action and narrative take place in the opening and closing chapters, while in Transylvania, but the entire book is one that any horror fan should add to their collection.

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Summary: It's a shame what Hollywood did to this
Review: I can't much improve on two reviews here chiding Hollywood for moving so far away from Bram Stoker's original vision.

In the future, I will suggest to people to read the book before watching a single Dracula movie. The size of the book IS daunting, but once one is finished reading it, you get a better picture of the Count.

There is one thing that a reader should NOT look forward to when reading Stoker's masterpiece and that is any sexual overtones. Francis Ford Coppola's version of the book took that concept and ran with it (although I love that version!). In fact, Mina couldn't stand the Count and played a very active part in his destruction (something that few movie versions, if any, address).

Fantastic read!

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Summary: Surprisingly Fresh
Review: The story of Dracula is a tired subject to modern readers. USA films production of the historic Vlad the Impaler, Hollywood productions of rewritten stories with new twists, and the entire (now hopefully dead) Goth movement have completely clouded the beauty, intrigue, and mystique of the original Dracula.

It begins with a train-ride into Transylvania, but it takes readers far closer to intellectual ecstasy than many other books of its type. It is not a book for mild entertainment, rather it is a work that requires thought. Imagination cannot help but flourish as Stoker vividly describes his characters in appearance, speech, and emotion. Their surroundings are equally portrayed as real, common-place scenes. There is little of a supernatural bent to the work, really. It is the essential frightening look at what could happen to ordinary people in ordinary circumstances when something sinister and something extra-ordinary meets them.

The original story is so far from the modern revisions that one will find it surprisingly fresh. It is like going through an entire genre of multimedia productions before coming to the one gem of them all. In this case, the original. Many are intimidated by the book's size and their preconceptions from modern mistakes. I believe that the real Bram Stoker's, 'Dracula' will excite and please more than people realize. I have bought copies for numerous reading-partners who have equally enjoyed this book when we have disagreed on so many others.

'Dracula' is well worth the consideration.

Rating:
Summary: "Unclean!"
Review: *Dracula* is now considered a masterpiece (with even such an august authority like Harold Bloom including it in his *Western Canon*). This is a recent development. The drive for canonization began about 20 years ago, after a generation of poorly educated academics, hypnotized by the need to politicize all literature, began talking about the book's "subversive themes" within its Victorian context. Before this, the novel was (rightly) dismissed as nothing more than a popular horror novel with some fun ... undertones. Influential, yes; but a classic of literature . . .? Alas, time marches on, and it now seems that Bram Stoker has become the Douglas Sirk of the Victorian literati. We are now told that Dracula is gay because his creator was gay. (After all, Dracula is a "Count", you know. Campy!) We are informed that the novel has a lot to say about how proper little Anglicans viewed swarthy Easterners. The Science vs. Religion debate gets a lot of ink. Freudian critics ecstatically write essays about the work, for obvious reasons.

The critics may be substantially correct. However, none of their intellectualizing will help the modern reader as he plows his way through this Ladies' Gothic Romance. Stoker deliberately employs an antiquated style that would have suited the 1830's rather than 1897, when the book was published. Oh, the characters are all very "modern"; the women know how to use typewriters; the headshrinkers record their skepticisms on phonographic diaries; but they also say things like this: "Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgement Day" (Chapter 22). The dialogue is peppered with stuff like: "Oh, dear, dear Jonathan", "My dear, sweet little girl", "What fools we women are!", etc. It's all rather embarrassing to read . . . darling. Didn't Stoker learn anything about prose style from his buddy Oscar Wilde? How could any self-respecting author write like this after the advent of Hardy and Henry James?

To be fair, let it be said that the first four chapters of the novel are among the best ever written in this genre. These early chapters are so strong, in fact, that the rest of the book is one long anti-climax. Jonathan Harker's journal is a compactly-written piece of terror that describes his spooky journey to Castle Dracula and his eventual imprisonment there by his lugubrious host. Even here, there's much to laugh at, such as Harker's snobbish anecdotes about the quaint "locals" of the Romanian countryside, his full cataloging of his meals (". . . I fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken", and so on), and the comical spectacle of Dracula cooking and later removing the table-service for his guest on a daily basis -- even after they have "caught on" to each other. Something about the early chapters has always fascinated me: Harker figures out within a fortnight that the Count is a vampire. The Count KNOWS that Harker is aware of his (the Count's) true nature. And yet they go on being civil to one another for at least two months afterwards! I wonder how they spent their evenings. The Count must have continued to cook for and feed his guest, who otherwise would've starved to death. What did they talk about? Stoker refuses to go into it -- the diary simply jumps weeks ahead.

There are excellent moments later in the book. Two remarkable monologues: the blasphemous diatribe on the hypocrisy of gravestones by Old Man Swales, and Van Helsing's great paean to hysteria, otherwise known as the "King Laugh" speech. The saga of the doomed ship "Demeter" is almost as worthy as the first four chapters. Dracula, as wolf, bursting through Lucy's bedroom window -- with the servants drugged downstairs -- is a genuinely terrifying scene.

Characters? Harker, Seward, Van Helsing, and Mina make the strongest impressions, except for Renfield, of course, the most interesting personage by far in the tale. And what of Dracula? He turns out to be a rather dim bulb. He apparently leaves the safe demesnes of his beloved Carpathians because he feels he's missing out on some sort of "action" or other. He's so eager to take a powder, in fact, that he forgets to make sure that Harker is safely dead (or Undead, as the case might be) before he books passage aboard the "Demeter". It never occurs to the vampire that the Englishman might make his way back home with a whopper of a tale to tell about funny-accented Romanians who climb up and down castle walls like Spider-Man. Further, the dopey Count recklessly goes after the same victims over and over once landed in England, thereby ensuring that a group of outraged Anglicans will pursue him to the ends of the earth. Oh well, Van Helsing DOES say that Dracula isn't very smart; but what does that say about Stoker's plotting? As far as the Count's appearance goes, the author apparently based the description on his own boss, the actor Sir Henry Irving.

Ultimately, the novel's hero is Mina, by default. She represents the emerging power of the "New Woman" (her phrase). Every character, including the vampire, gets seduced by her eventually. Stoker makes a point of having Mina "win over" her poor dead friend Lucy's three suitors (AFTER she's married to Harker, no less) in a scene that subversively mocks Lucy's ... triumphs (which were pretty subversive already). Later, she adds the Dutch quack and the vampire to her collection of conquered males. Meanwhile, her husband Harker lies in the hymeneal marriage bed literally paralyzed, with gray hair, while she gets it on with Dracula. This priceless moment produces Stoker's best line, e.g., that bit about the Count forcing her face to his chest as if he were pushing a kitten's head into a saucer of milk. Unclean!

Rating:
Summary: Dracula
Review: This book is one of my all-time favorites. Its characters are believable, the story well crafted, and the entire reading experience a joy. Stoker's grasp of medical technology would make most modern physicians cringe (blood transfusions without verifying blood type, etc.) but who cares? This book is worthy of reading more than once.

Dracula is the epitome of gothic horror yet it is not "spooky" and really doesn't cause nightmares in the reader. The book may not have the reputation of the film versions, but it is far superior to any Hollywood version. There simply is too much happening for any film to completely portray in two hours. The book is a classic good-versus-evil and reflects a Victorian view of faith and sexuality. Some on-line reader's guides are available to help give perspective on the book, but are not necessarily required.

All told, I rank this book high, I have only a few other works of fiction I rate higher.