thecoloursinme's Full Review: Elizabeth Kostova - The Historian
The Historian, this two pound tome proves to hold a delicate balance between beautiful descriptive text, and just plain boring text. I personally feel like it can be deceiving to say that this is a well-written book. Although the prose is verbose and Victorian-esque with BEAUTIFUL descriptions with evidence of a LOT of research, it doesn't necessarily read very easily...nor does the story come across very clearly.
The book tells the tale of various different but related parties as they trek through Europe in search of Dracula’s tomb. Yes, Dracula. By now you all probably have heard that this book is dedicated in large part to the tale of the historical Dracula, Vlad Teppes, or Vlad the Impaler as he is most affectionately known. Vlad Teppes was a ruler over an area in southern Romania known during his time in the fifteenth century as Wallachia (not wall-ahh-chee-yah, but wah-lake-eee-yah).
Enter in the narrator of the story, a teenage girl who I’ll call her Eva since it is revealed at the end of the book (and not a page before) that this is her name. Eva is the daughter of a gifted highly educated (not to mention rich) historian named Paul. What does this mean? It means he likes to pore over antique parchments, unearthing stories about the past. Eva shares this same interest, which is probably why she was bound to eventually stumble upon her father’s secret stash of journals on one of the top shelves of his library. And this is where the story begins: “My dear and unfortunate successor,” - the successor being the poor sucker who ends up having to take over where Paul has left off. Are you confused yet? Well as the reader you will be just as confused, because the story unfolds so very slowly, that by the time we reach some of our answers, we sorta forget we were looking for them. At any rate, Eva demands her father to explain the meaning behind these letters.
Eva’s father doesn’t want to reveal his whole story all at once, because it’s too much for him to relive (yeah, I know…I thought the same thing). He's very reluctant to even speak at ALL about them. Over the process of several months, he tells her his story bit by bit, and as the reader we are left impatient for details at first. Then we start to get used to the doggedly slow pace of the book. One day Eva wakes up to find her father gone, and she finds a note revealing that he has gone to look for her mother. This may come as a shock to her since her mother is supposed to be dead, however if she is shocked by this, we don't find out about it. She is much more concerned with finding out where her father has gone. She finds a stack of his journals with the note, and it explains that the papers reveal the rest of his story. On a whim, she decides to travel to the city she believes her father has run off to in search of her mother.
The bulk of this book is devoted to the remaining contents in these letters that she finds. It chronicles the hunt and search of Vlad Teppes' tomb. You see, when Paul himself was in college, his beloved advisor disappeared, and Paul believed it had something to do with Vlad Teppes, who was not only Dracula, but a real live vampire. According to folklore (or at least Bram Stoker, someone you wouldn't think these scholars would refer to but did) a vampire must sleep in his coffin during the day, so if Dracula indeed kidnapped his advisor, it would make sense that if he were still alive, he’d also be in the tomb.
Don’t get me wrong, this story is beautifully written. I adored the historical descriptions and all the details. It was indeed thoroughly researched and accurate…I learned a lot, and I value this in my reading material. However, I also found myself to be a bit disappointed. All through the story it hints at some impending doom of terror to be revealed later on….and…well it just never is. We wait and wait and wait for a climax that never really arrives. The story is just so lukewarm. Everyone in the story finds that talking about Dracula is so terrifying that they simply cannot bear relive their stories all at once. People gasp, perform the sign of the cross...Yet none of this terror manages to reach out and grab the reader. I believe a lot of the chapter endings were meant to be cliffhangers, but for me they just left me scratching my head or rolling my eyes. I recommend it to those of you with a good attention span and also those of you who pay attention to detail. Some of you may not have the patience for it, a lot of it reads like a textbook. I suggest to give it a chance though, you’ll learn a lot.
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