Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4600 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 720 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Some stories can be told again in endlessly different ways. Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian combines a search for the historical Dracula with a profound sense that Stoker got some things right--that the late Mediaeval tyrant kills among us yet, undead and dangerous. From Stoker, she also takes a sense that the supernatural seems more real when embedded in documentary evidence.

Three generations search for Dracula's resting place, and their stories are nested within each other, so that we know that at least two quests ended badly. Kostova rations her thrills very carefully so that we jump out of our chair at quite slight surprises, especially when we have come to expect buckets of blood and loud bangs. She also has a profound and well-communicated sense of place and period, so that the book is equally at home in 1930s Rumania, Cold War Budapest and 1970s Oxford. Kostova is particularly good on the sights and sounds of remote country places and the taste of real peasant food--this sensuous realism does not always go with her other skill, the creation of imagined documents and folksongs that feel as real and true as what might be actual.

This is a quietly good book rather than a spectacular debut, with some uncomfortable twists in its tail; her heroine-narrators are, and perhaps remain, in the most serious of jeopardies. ---Roz Kaveney

OBSERVER
'A vastly ingenious plot . . . Kostova is a whiz at storytelling and narrative pace'

DAILY MAIL
'This literary mystery is a page-turner with brains'

Customer Reviews

The worst book I've ever suffered.
For those who haven't read this book, consider yourselves fortunate. For those who have read this book, I know a good therapist.

As a story, it's convoluted, unbearably detailed, over populated with convenient characters, and as flat and shallow as the last dregs of a mud puddle on a hot day. As a piece of writing, it kept me reading for all the wrong reasons, which I'll explain later.

I never fully understood how much of this was the father speaking to his daughter through obsessively detailed letters (or perfect memory) and how much was him addressing the reader as archived narrative. At the start the teenage daughter is told directly by him about his interest in vampires, but then she finds out the rest through reading his long letters, or him re-living his past word for word. That's fine for a chapter or two but then more letters and tales keep on coming, then more, each becoming so detailed and rambling that it soon becomes apparent that the author hasn't the first idea how to hold the plot's endless trails and backgrounds together. Then there are the girl's own personal memoirs because the story is told as her own memoirs many years after the events! But let's not forget there are also the medieval memoirs, then the historical ones relayed by other characters, the mother and yet more from the father.
Nothing happens in the here and now, so the book lacks any grounding. Rossi, the professor, also writes endless letters to tell us his side of the story. It's so haphazard! In one of Paul's many letters to his daughter, he explains why so many detailed letters are needed regarding his secret background. I quote, ".....furthermore, you might not fully believe it if I told it at a blow, just as I could not believe my advisor Rossi's story fully without pacing the length of his own reminiscences. What story can be reduced in actuality to its factual elements?"
I wanted to stop reading at that point but I felt like someone passing a car crash. I had to take a look!

Other reviewers have pointed out the flowery language used by the male characters, particularly Paul, the most prominent character (I was never sure who the lead was!). These mannerisms made me laugh and I haven't encountered it in other novels to the extent it's presented here. "Her smile held the beauty of every woman in her family" is not an observation a man would make, at least not the ones I know. Paul again, "The other fellow was tall and graceful, in a summer suit and hat. The handsome man gave him a slap on the back...." and then, when he's feeling happy with a colleague who's brought some conveniently timed information, "I wanted to kneel before him and kiss his foot". Or how about his proposal to Helen, "I couldn't imagine being without that hand, with it's square tipped finger nails and soft skin over hard bone". Pick a page at random, you won't be disappointed.

A descriptive quirk which always annoys me is the kind which conjures up two images at the same time, one intended, the other surreal. Once or twice is hardly noticeable, but when it happens dozens of times in the story it undermines everything!
For example, in a library Paul tells us "Suddenly a lavender sweater moved into my field of view". What does that bring to mind? Not the librarian wearing it, that's for sure. Or how about "She stirred her tea with a sad face." Must have been a big cup. When Helen and her daughter are together, "She picked up my hand again and caressed it like a fortune teller". How do you caress a fortune teller? And when did the girl's hand drop off? "My father dropped my arm and ran toward the flashlight...." That poor girl is falling apart. And the icing on the cake, "My father drew his hand over his face". I imagined the father with a hand outlined on his face for an entire chapter. This way of writing turned my brain upside down and nothing made sense by the end because almost everything could be taken the wrong way.

The constant flow of coincidences was staggering. So much depends upon chance encounters to move the story away from a dead end, or as in the case of the folk singer, her convenient festival day and the very convenient folk dancing, would cause the story to grind to a halt. The number of people who throw the right information in at the right time becomes insulting.

Certain stylistic points drove me mad on every page. EK's compulsion to precede every noun or pronoun with either one or two adjectives made this unreadable for more than a few pages at a time. There are some pages where the same adjectives are used a few times over! This habit appears early on whenever we need to know precisely how everything, and I mean everything, looks, no matter how contrived. The novelty wore off after the three millionth time. It usually involves something ending in "-ly" or "-ous" but I lost count after the fifth chapter. Most of the descriptions, regardless of excessive adjectives, is entirely unnecessary but the detail, no matter how small, is always told. On other occasions descriptions are used in a way I find deeply annoying, for example "Her dark-jumpered elbow" or "....in her black-skirted lap". That's forgivable a few times, but not over and over and over!

The mother is the most contrived and ridiculous character. She disappears from her husband and daughter's life when the child is a year old, and spends the next 15 years looking for Dracula and writing postcards of the most whimsical, trivial, chatty nature to her daughter, which are never sent. But they end up with the father, who is so dim he doesn't quite know what to do, and then the daughter has them but she seems to have inherited his intellect. He also doesn't wonder where a large withdrawal went from his bank account shortly after her disappearance, or the many taken since then. That's a tricky one to figure.

Any book with a line like "I let out my in-drawn breath" or the glorious "When I could stand, I got up" and the classic "After an endless moment" make me wonder if the editor has seen this yet.

I never knew it, but Dracula has his name carved in large letters on the side of his coffin. Should you ever see it, you'll know who it belongs to. Kindly return it to him. All the right people will meet you, one way or another, to let you know where it belongs and how to get there. Coincidences will guide you!

This book ticked no boxes for me and I'll have to read more Amazon reviews before taking the plunge into a long story next time!

Tedious
I was so looking forward to reading this - I love Interview with the Vampire, Dracula, people delving into esoteric research that goes wrong... But this is so boring, the writing is cliched beyond belief and the story is full of ludicrous coincidences - if they bumped into one more academic who had *gasp* also found a dragon book I was going to scream. What is it with those books anyway? Who's leaving them around the place, Dracula? Why? Can't he just pay someone to do his cataloguing then kill them? Or brainwash them like he does his minions? And why does the narrator only talk with her father over a period of months in Mediterranean cities - what's wrong with talking in the kitchen? Just awful

Gripping but tough at times
I did really enjoy this book and, therefore, give it four stars. However, I can understand the comments by many other reviewers.

The style of writing may not suit everyone. It is quite archaic at times, but to be quite honest I thought that this suited the gothic theme and atmosphere of the book. Some of the descriptions are a little long winded and the narrative hops back and forth between various characters and time periods. This can be a very effective method of story telling and, personally, I found it excellent. However, I can understand that it can be frustrating and confusing sometimes.

I found myself sympathising with the main characters almost immediately and enjoyed Ms Kostova's character development. My main problem was with some of the narrative and side stories (in the form of letters from the 15th and 16th centuries). Some of these did seem a little superfluous to requirements and dragged on. It took me ages to finish this book and I'm usually a swift reader, but I could only take in a few pages at a time.

I really enjoyed the ending, but wished that I had been able to get to that point without having taken so long to read it. I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys stories of the gothic variety, but would caution them to ensure that they are aware it may take them some time to finish it.