Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Around the World in 80 Books

Apr 21, 2020 Linda Martin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, geo-england, fiction, audiobook, classics, horror, magical-realism, 2020, science

Dr. Jekyll climbed his own tower of Babel and fell to the earth with a resounding thud as his medical miracle experiment produced the worst sort of result with himself as the unexpecting victim.

I think we all know that this novel is about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a good/bad juxtaposition, but when it starts we are greeted by Mr. Utterson, an attorney, who is out walking with Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman. I found that a bit off-putting as I expected Jekyll or Hyde, not Utterson and E Dr. Jekyll climbed his own tower of Babel and fell to the earth with a resounding thud as his medical miracle experiment produced the worst sort of result with himself as the unexpecting victim.

I think we all know that this novel is about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a good/bad juxtaposition, but when it starts we are greeted by Mr. Utterson, an attorney, who is out walking with Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman. I found that a bit off-putting as I expected Jekyll or Hyde, not Utterson and Enfield. Like, who were they to intrude on my exploration of Robert Louis Stevenson's weird little novel?

I tried to read this book years ago and became quickly discouraged because of this Utterson-Enfield approach to the story. I wanted to read about good Dr. Jekyll and bad Mr. Hyde. I was too impatient. This time, in 2020, I gave the novel a second chance and got past the first few pages, and learned a bit from Mr. Utterson, who it turns out was Dr. Jekyll's lawyer who had even drawn up a will for him.

Okay, no spoilers - I can't tell you more... but this turned out to be a riveting short reading experience.

I want to draw the reader's attention to a descriptive passage which I found on page 16 of my copy of the novel. This shows Stevenson's mastery and skill in writing:

"It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare."

Sure sets the scene, doesn't it?

I read this book not only because I wanted to read another great classic (one of my reading loves) but also because I used this novel to satisfy a prompt in the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge: prompt #5 - A book set in a city that has hosted the Olympics. London hosted the Summer Olympics in 1908, 1948, and 2012.

Quite a few years ago, in the late 1990's, I hiked up Mt. St. Helena in California, in Robert Louis Stevenson State Park. This was where Stevenson and his bride, Fanny, spent their honeymoon in 1880. I hiked to the cabin location, but it is no longer there. It was quite a steep hillside and I like to think that he and Fanny had a horse to ride up there. It is a heart-warming feeling to think I've crossed paths with him, albeit a century and a decade later. My mother read Stevenson's poetry to me when I was a child, so he's always had a special place in my heart. ...more

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