Sophmoric, predictable, tidy, waste of time
Written: Sep 26 '05 (Updated Jan 16 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Looks good on a bookshelf
Cons: Stiff language. Boring. Childish. Silly.
The Bottom Line: One of the most boring and silly and pointless books I've ever read.
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| paulsavage's Full Review: Elizabeth Kostova - The Historian |
This is a 700 page novel that covers a hunt for Dracula. I won't give the end away, in case someone cares to go that far. That is the storyline. It takes place over about 30 years and almost as many countries. The novel is written more as an exhaustive travelogue written by a strict grammarian than an adventure novel.
There is a moment in A River Runs Through It where the father keeps having his son re-edit the paper he is writing so that it is half as long: "Good, now do it again, but half as long." If memory serves, he does this 4 times. If that happened to The Historian, it would be just over a hundred pages. While significantly shorter, it would still be no less silly. This is just another da Vinci Code wannabee.
Kostova uses 4 narrators to tell her ultimately silly tale. The first problem is that all of the voices sound the same. They are all very formal and stiff with perfect grammar and sentence structure and nothing to grab hold of to make any of the characters different in any significant way.
It also lacks any sense of true drama. The plot is built on one laughable coincidence after another. She could have used some of her time she spent on silly details (like shoes, whose descriptions alone would take up several pages if pulled together) to emphasize that coincidence and luck can play a part in research.
It is a mystery novel with no real mystery and an adventure novel filled with a travel writer's sense of detail (descriptions of Istanbul, Budapest, and on and on were all basically the same anyway) but no sense of adventure--unless the insides of a dozen libraries count as adventurous.
I don't tend to read for plot, I prefer character and clever or 'honest' sense of language. The Historian had neither of these. Finally it didn't have a unique enough plot to keep it truly interesting. I finished it simply because it was like a train wreck: I could put it down, but then I wouldn't get to laugh at the folly.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
paulsavage
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Member: paul savage
Location: alabama, us
Reviews written: 499
Trusted by: 65 members
About Me:
A puny inexhaustible voice still talking
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