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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
An interesting book. Very scary to realise that this happens to people, and even scarier that this isn't always diagnosed. At times the book feels slow in pace until you realise that events were even slower in real life for those who lived it.
I can't say I enjoyed this as much as the other books I've read by this author.
It starts out fine, perhaps a little slow, with a few too many false starts in the case, but it picks up dramatically towards the end.
The resolution, however, left me feeling...icky. Firstly that the crime committed is pretty nasty and unpleasant to read about. Secondly that *spoilers from now on*:
*Spoilers spoilers spoilers ahead*
*Stop reading for no spoilers*
The outcome all felt quite strangely misogynistic. I've got no problem in theory with female perpetrators, but this had a very strange undercurrent where all the female characters were either desperate mothers (defined entirely by their relationship to children), sidelined female police officers, or utterly hideous, manipulative, working class criminals who lie, rape, cuckold, scam and falsely accuse innocent men. There are several strange pronouncements such as 'the female of the species is even more selfish and narcissistic than the male' and 'women beware other women'. Everyone suddenly turns into a hideous cartoon villain.
That aside, there are way too many random occurences and lucky breaks that allow them to solve the case amongst some extremely, EXTREMELY shoddy police work.
It starts out fine, perhaps a little slow, with a few too many false starts in the case, but it picks up dramatically towards the end.
The resolution, however, left me feeling...icky. Firstly that the crime committed is pretty nasty and unpleasant to read about. Secondly that *spoilers from now on*:
*Spoilers spoilers spoilers ahead*
*Stop reading for no spoilers*
The outcome all felt quite strangely misogynistic. I've got no problem in theory with female perpetrators, but this had a very strange undercurrent where all the female characters were either desperate mothers (defined entirely by their relationship to children), sidelined female police officers, or utterly hideous, manipulative, working class criminals who lie, rape, cuckold, scam and falsely accuse innocent men. There are several strange pronouncements such as 'the female of the species is even more selfish and narcissistic than the male' and 'women beware other women'. Everyone suddenly turns into a hideous cartoon villain.
That aside, there are way too many random occurences and lucky breaks that allow them to solve the case amongst some extremely, EXTREMELY shoddy police work.
Studied this in university; acted and directed scenes from it - then finally watched the 1977 movie! After that, re-read the play. Wears its 40+ years well. Fascinating!
I couldn't make it through the whole thing. The good: interesting historical stories. The bad: the author treats each "law" as black and white and then in the next segment offer a counter example. As the author states, each law is merely a likelihood that he often claims as absolute. Meh overall.
Noooooooo! cliffhangers.... what happens to everyone? where do leo and calypso go?
A rather dull plot and very wordy. This is admittedly not my typical genre, but I prefer DFW's musings and essays over his novels.
Dracula presents an intriguing tension between Romanticism, Victorian, and Modern England. While several critics tend to limit Dracula to a sexual character (which is true), he encompasses a much more sinister outlook on the savagery and cunning mentality of the Romantics, while Lucy takes on the Victorian ways, and Van-Helsing spearheads the Modern period. Stoker's message is not clear because he has included so much in this realistic novel; his criticisms of three different periods; the repression of sexuality in Victorian society; the inevitable rise of Modernity... the list keeps going. I think the best aspect of this novel is how intentional Stoker makes the plot; every diary entry, journal entry, memorandum, letter, and phonograph recording have just the right amount of detail, and are organized in such a way that gives the book its "endless" value to the world. Stoker's vampire is not just a manipulative teen who takes advantage of humans for sex and fun; Dracula is systematically breaking down an intentional way of life one little step at a time. What Stoker presents is a meticulous, ancient, deliberate ploy to bring a culture to ruin. I highly recommend Dracula to anyone who is ready to walk through a plan that took centuries to play out.
My favorite part about this book is the realization that many of our saints may have been closer to the Whiskey Priest than to the stories we tell about them