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A review by selfmythologies
Dracula by Bram Stoker
4.0
The best part of this book by far is the opening part of Jonathan Harker in Dracula's castle. It's just very well done, genuinely scary, and the whole scenery of Transylvania with the superstititous people, the mountains away from civilization, the castle high on the hill, the wolves.....that was all excellent. And Dracula as a character is pretty well written as well, though we never really get to see things from his POV, but I think the things we do learn along the way about his history and motivation make for a striking picture.
The chapters afterward are...not bad and there are some great parts (like the diary of that captain whose ship Dracula is one - wonderfully creepy - or the descriptions of Lucy sleepwalking), but it feels very drawn out and anticlimatic overall. Once everyone's in on the picture and knows what's going on, the thing just loses a lot of its mystery. The endless discussions among the group and the vampire hunt at the last 200 pages or so are okay, but nothing more.
But it's the structure and form that really makes this whole book engaging. It's all told in parts of letters, diary entries, telegrams, etc, from different characters, that are then also collected and used as a reference of information within the story (so it's quite meta too!) In this way the whole book feels like a mystery out of puzzle pieces that the reader gets to participate in. If it wasn't for this genuinely entertaining and interesting form, the book wouldn't have been half as good - the plot alone, as I mentioned, is fairly simple but long-winded, and couldn't have held this up on its own. But the fragmentation of the narrative really adds to the sense of uncanniness in the best moments.
The characters were a bit too one-dimensional for me - there's no way to even tell Jonathan, Arthur and Quincey apart except for their work and like, one character trait, and Van Helsing starts out entertaining but then just becomes annoying with his constant monologues. Mina was intriguing, and could have been a genuinely amazing character if it wasn't for sexism (I could write an entire paper about gender in this novel but I won't go into it).
Seward was probably the one whose chapters I enjoyed the most because of his profession as a doctor at a psychiatric clinic - and of course I also have to mention Renfield here. RENFIELD DESERVED BETTER. He was so interesting as a character, and the way he was tied into the plot and Dracula/vampirism was quite genius - the themes of consumption, of the value of a human life, subjectivity vs the desire to literally 'take in' the life of others - there was SO MUCH to his arc, and philosophical stuff too. He didn't deserve his ending, and to then be completely forgotten by everyone else.
Overall the themes of this book certainly leave a lot to be explored. I've read one (1) secondary text on it for uni and from that alone I learned that Dracula has been taken as a metaphor for the horrors of modernity, consumerism and capitalism, modern media culture.....literally you could draw a connection from this book to any relevant Contemporary Discourse and it would probably make sense. These are the kinds of books you'll want to get back to, the ones who always have something left to tell you.
So yeah. For that, and for the formal aspects, great individual passages and characters I give it 4 stars, in spite of my criticisms. It certainly is a classic worth reading, regardless of its shortcomings!
//original:
i am FINALLY DONE how is it even possible it took me this long to read this damned book.
especially because i did enjoy it, overall, but god does it seem long winded at points
more detailed RTC
The chapters afterward are...not bad and there are some great parts (like the diary of that captain whose ship Dracula is one - wonderfully creepy - or the descriptions of Lucy sleepwalking), but it feels very drawn out and anticlimatic overall. Once everyone's in on the picture and knows what's going on, the thing just loses a lot of its mystery. The endless discussions among the group and the vampire hunt at the last 200 pages or so are okay, but nothing more.
But it's the structure and form that really makes this whole book engaging. It's all told in parts of letters, diary entries, telegrams, etc, from different characters, that are then also collected and used as a reference of information within the story (so it's quite meta too!) In this way the whole book feels like a mystery out of puzzle pieces that the reader gets to participate in. If it wasn't for this genuinely entertaining and interesting form, the book wouldn't have been half as good - the plot alone, as I mentioned, is fairly simple but long-winded, and couldn't have held this up on its own. But the fragmentation of the narrative really adds to the sense of uncanniness in the best moments.
The characters were a bit too one-dimensional for me - there's no way to even tell Jonathan, Arthur and Quincey apart except for their work and like, one character trait, and Van Helsing starts out entertaining but then just becomes annoying with his constant monologues. Mina was intriguing, and could have been a genuinely amazing character if it wasn't for sexism (I could write an entire paper about gender in this novel but I won't go into it).
Seward was probably the one whose chapters I enjoyed the most because of his profession as a doctor at a psychiatric clinic - and of course I also have to mention Renfield here. RENFIELD DESERVED BETTER. He was so interesting as a character, and the way he was tied into the plot and Dracula/vampirism was quite genius - the themes of consumption, of the value of a human life, subjectivity vs the desire to literally 'take in' the life of others - there was SO MUCH to his arc, and philosophical stuff too. He didn't deserve his ending, and to then be completely forgotten by everyone else.
Overall the themes of this book certainly leave a lot to be explored. I've read one (1) secondary text on it for uni and from that alone I learned that Dracula has been taken as a metaphor for the horrors of modernity, consumerism and capitalism, modern media culture.....literally you could draw a connection from this book to any relevant Contemporary Discourse and it would probably make sense. These are the kinds of books you'll want to get back to, the ones who always have something left to tell you.
So yeah. For that, and for the formal aspects, great individual passages and characters I give it 4 stars, in spite of my criticisms. It certainly is a classic worth reading, regardless of its shortcomings!
//original:
i am FINALLY DONE how is it even possible it took me this long to read this damned book.
especially because i did enjoy it, overall, but god does it seem long winded at points
more detailed RTC