I recently read Dracula by Bram Stoker. It wasn’t my first attempt at reading this book, but it was the first time I succeeded. Overall, I liked it a lot, and it’s easy to see why it’s such an enduring classic.
The first third of the book is amazingly slow; it’s told from the journals of Jonathan and Mina Harker, Dr. Seward, and other characters. The book really starts taking off when Dr. Abraham Van shows up. Van Helsing is the obvious star of the show, being doctor of literature, medicine, theology, and other disciplines, like, say, vampire hunting. Van Helsing is so awesome that Stoker had to hobble him with a bad Old Country Dutch accent, which does occasionally make for some humorous literal translations of common English idioms (“Quincey’s head is parallel with the horizontal plane.”).
Renfield was written as amazingly brilliant (at least when he wasn’t eating bugs), which is really wild because Dr. Seward comes across as smart and Van Helsing comes across as really smart, and that means that the entire time Stoker was writing Van Helsing, he was holding back so that Renfield would shine.
Spoilers follow:
My only real gripe with the book was when Mina got bitten. Stoker drops a tiny hint with, “Mina looked pale.” In light of all the characters have gone through with Mina’s friend, Lucy, you know what he is hinting at, just with that small clue.
But he spends another several chapters drudging through the diaries of Van Helsing, Mina, and Jonathan Harker elaborating how Mina is so sick and so tired and so pale and no-one has the slightest clue what could be blah blah blah. This section of the book was amazingly frustrating to read, and then when Harker does his big reveal it goes down like this:
MINA: I’m so pale!
JONATHAN HARKER: Mina!
COUNT DRACULA: What’s up, homies?
VAN HELSING and JONATHAN HARKER: What are you doing here?
COUNT DRACULA: I totally bit Mina!
READERS: Duh.
JONATHAN AND VAN HELSING: NOOOOooooo!
COUNT DRACULA: Ha ha! PWNED!
Other than that section, I loved the book as a whole, and I think you should read it.
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