by Bram Stoker
I had very mixed feelings after reading Bram Stoker's classic horror novel about the seminal vampire of modern literature.
The first part of the story, in which English solicitor Jonathan Harker is trapped inside Castle Dracula with the dread count, is riveting and so much better than I expected.
Stoker conjures up a truly oppressive and frightening atmosphere.
However, once the action shifts to England, the story bogs down and never really gets going again.
Stoker uses the unwieldy device of telling the entire story through the journal entries of various characters--they must have truly extraordinary memories to reproduce the conversations and lengthy speeches contained therein.
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| Bram Stoker |
The characters themselves are paper thin; all of the men are brave and honorable and all of the women fair and pure.
Stoker devotes page after page to conversations in which characters deliver testimonials to each other's sterling qualities, which grows rather tiresome very quickly.
To make matters worse, Dracula fades into the background at this point and makes only a few appearances after that.
There are a few effective moments and things pick up a bit by the end of the novel, but it is never able to match the horror of its brilliant first section.
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| "Dracula the Vampire" (Italian) |
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| "Dracula" (Swedish) |
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| "Dracula" (Malay) |
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| "Dracula" (German) |
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| "Dracula" (Greek) |
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| "Dracula" (Spanish) |
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| "Dracula" (Portuguese) |
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| "Selected Horrors of Count Dracula" (Hungarian) |
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| "Dracula" (Danish) |
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| "Dracula" (Polish) |
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| "Dracula" (Czech) |
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| "Dracula" (Bulgarian) |
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| "Dracula" (Bengali) |
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| "Dracula" (Romanian) |
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| "Dracula" (Catalan) |
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| "Dracula" (Estonian) |
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| "Dracula" (Malayalam) |
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| "Dracula" (French) |
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| "Dracula" (Galician) |
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| "Dracula" (Lithuanian) |
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