an author's review:\Dracula by Bram Stoker

Dracula by Bram Stoker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a difficult book to summarise because, for much of the book, there isn't much "plot" happening. Nevertheless, here's a brief spoiler-free summary:

A young solicitor travels to Transylvania to seal the purchase of a London property for Count Dracula, but he's prevented from leaving and is overwhelmed by the horrors there.
Not long after, an abandoned ship runs aground in Whitby, an asylum patient rants about the coming of his "master", and a lady battles a wasting illness that disappears her blood.
A baffled doctor summons Professor Van Helsing, an expert in the Un-Dead, who leads efforts to find and stop the vampire Count before he takes another victim.

The opening act is the strongest. It sets a spooky atmosphere from the very beginning, describing the journey of young solicitor Jonathan Harker to Dracula's castle in the deep of night. Stoker did a good job of showing this was a place to fear without explicitly showing anything violent or gruesome.

If you're squeamish, this is a safe horror to read.

When Harker arrives, Count Dracula is very charming and not at all scary. But things are not as they seem. Harker is slow to realise the situation he's in as the tension builds little by little, until the story switches to England, to the solicitor's fiancée and her friend.

All the atmosphere and dread that had been built since the first chapter vanishes into the mists.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE

Dracula himself is only alluded to or talked about for almost the entire second act; we only see the impacts of his actions, which are intended to instil terror, but they felt weak considering how powerful we're meant to consider him.

When Van Helsing is beckoned, he's secretive about what they're dealing with. Stoker likely intended to create mystery and fear of the unknown, but unfortunately, he shows Van Helsing to be so capable that I never felt Dracula was a threat to him.

I didn't expect an action sequence finale given what had gone before, but I did expect some kind of struggle, maybe a battle of wits. Instead, Dracula does not appear until the final chapter, and whilst the ending made some sense, it was anticlimactic.

SPOILERS END HERE

The second act felt like it had been padded out and could have been far shorter. It never shifted into a higher gear; in fact the whole book was one-paced, even in the third act's race against time. It felt like a screenplay that ran out of budget.

Nearing the end of a horror story, I expected dread, apprehension, anxiety. I felt none of those.

Two traits of this book work in tandem to reduce tension: the structure and the writing style.

The story is told in a series of journal entries, letters, newspaper articles, memos, and telegrams. It's an interesting choice, and it did lend the story a sense of realism, especially about halfway through when it explained how all the different writings came together into one collection — the book you're reading. That was nicely done.

However, if you're reading something written by a character, you know they must survive the events of that chapter. Any situation that might seem threatening to that person immediately loses its sense of peril.

Whether it's because of the structure, the time period (late 1800's), or this was just Stoker's style, the writing is very formal. It was undeniably impressive and often beautiful, despite the dark subject matter, but it was incredibly slow throughout. Long and flowery sentences drain all tension. One passage felt particularly jarring: Van Helsing needed to pass on information in a hurried whisper before someone approached, yet he still spoke in the same more-words-than-necessary manner, a full lengthy paragraph.

I found the language style required focus to read. When I was tired, I had to stop sooner than I wanted because it takes effort to properly appreciate the writing. This isn't a criticism; it isn't light reading and that's fine by me.

There was very little differentiation between the characters, how they acted or wrote, other than a male/female divide.

The women were all gentle, caring beauties that the men instantly fell in love with; the men were all strong protectors. Whilst allowances can be made due to the time period it belongs to, it's harder to look past the lack of individuality. I often struggled to tell the various men apart, for example.

It made sense Dracula wasn't fleshed out — again, trying to create fear of the unknown — but I think showing Dracula's abilities would have been more effective than Van Helsing telling us about them.

The combination of the language style and the epistolary structure rob the story of all tension.

It's a horror novel that isn't scary.

But I enjoyed reading it. The grand prose will stick with me for a long time, and the deluxe hardbound edition I read added to the reading experience.

It isn't for everyone, and is probably tame by modern horror standards, but for Stoker's elegant language, and for its historic significance and influence, it's worth a read.



View all my reviews