Although I’ve enjoyed the gothic TV soap opera Dark Shadows, seen Dracula movies and heard various vampire stories, I’d never read the book that started it all. So, Bram Stoker’s Dracula became the subject of Bookmamas’ October 29 book discussion. This Victorian classic tells the tale of naïve English attorney Jonathan Harker’s trip to conclude business with Count Dracula in Transylvania and the ensuing events. After the Count reveals his true colors, he flees to England searching for new, fresh blood. Soon, dreadful events are happening everywhere. The chase is on with our heroes attempting to vanquish the ultimate evil in the form of Count Dracula.
The book’s themes of good versus evil, modernity versus tradition and the gender roles of people are as important in the 21st century as they were in Victorian England. Therefore, except for some of the stilted Victorian style writing and vocabulary, the book feels contemporary. Stoker writes the book in an epistolary format with letters, diary entries, memoranda, a ship’s log and newspaper articles. This is an interesting experiment which mostly succeeds.
Stoker’s book affected me more than any of the Dracula movies ever have. It starts out merely dark and gloomy, then slowly, surely and steadily becomes creepier on each page. The writing evokes images much more unsettling than those of the screen. The biggest problem of the book is the one sided characters. They don’t seem like well rounded people. But they do work effectively at moving the plot along and increasing the creepiness factor of the book.
Buy your copy of “Dracula” at Bookmamas during the Halloween festival and come to the discussion at Bookmamas on Wednesday, October 29 at 7:00 p.m.