This week sees the final book of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads feature, 'The Historian' by Elizabeth Kostova.
The book is a new take on an old tale - the legend of Dracula. It is inspired heavily by Bram Stoker's work, particularly in considering that Dracula is still wandering freely among us, and that he holds an historical significance wider than many of us have realised. The book is a set of sroties within stories - almost like a literary russian doll. The story is begun by a teenage girl who finds a mysterious book in her father's library. This contains letters bequeathed to her father (Paul) by his dissertation supervisor (Rossi) many years ago. The structure is a mixture of the girl's first person account of events interspersed with a packet of letters left by her father, which also give the content of the letters written by Rossi. All three protaganists are in search of one being - Dracula, Rossi searches alone whilst Paul is accompanied by Helen (who happens to be Rossi's estranged duaghter), and the girl is accompanied by a student she met at Oxford.
Carry on across the cut to see what I thought of the book.
I am loathe to admit that on a number of occasions I became tempted to throw this book across the room - it really was that frustrating a read. The first 100 or so pages dragged horribly, but sure that it must get better I persevered. I haven't made my mind up yet whether I'm glad I did.
The plot was very intricatly planned, with the three stories lying comfortably on one another - though at times these did veer a little too far from the believable (yes even for a book about vampires). I also found myself diasppointed that Kostova spent so little time on the vampires themselves - having read more books on vampires than I probably should have I did expect a little more fangy business.
The characters were a mixed bunch really. I found the three protaganists a little dull if I'm perfectly honest - Paul particularly was far too whingy for my liking. The characters met by Paul and Helen on their travels were far more vibrant, and the combination of these and the descriptions of many Eastern Eurpoean countries were one of the saving features of this book.
I'm not going to give the ending away to you, but I will say this - I ended up feeling like I still didn't know half of what I expected to know at the end. There was an incident with about 40 pages to go that was dealt with far too quickly, and there were far too many unanswered questions.
All in all I was pretty disappointed with this book. It wasn't a bad book, I just wanted it to be better than it was.
Rating : 3 out of 5
