DESCRIPTION FROM AMAZON.com:
During a business visit to Count Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, a young English solicitor finds himself at the center of a series of horrifying incidents. Jonathan Harker is attacked by three phantom women, observes the Count’s transformation from human to bat form, and discovers puncture wounds on his own neck that seem to have been made by teeth.
Harker returns home upon his escape from Dracula’s grim fortress, but a friend’s strange malady — involving sleepwalking, inexplicable blood loss, and mysterious throat wounds — initiates a frantic vampire hunt. The popularity of Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror romance is as deathless as any vampire. Its supernatural appeal has spawned a host of film and stage adaptations, and more than a century after its initial publication, it continues to hold readers spellbound.
REVIEW AS AN AUTHOR:
I usually start with my review as a reader but today I have to start with my review as an author. I have read this book at least twice, maybe even more, and find the story wonderful — but only because I’ve seen movies that stuck very closely to the storyline.
I found the technique of telling the story through a series of letters VERY CONFUSING. Extremely confusing. Reading through the letters as a reader, it is enjoyable and they do add to the element of suspense and a low-grade horror that continues through the book. However, after reading the book several times, I would never have been able to give an account of who everyone was and where they all went in the story. That was all too elusive with going back and forth between the letters from different people and then back to the narrative itself.
SPOILER ALERT – QUICK SYNOPSIS OF THE PLOTLINE
So for anyone who wants to see the action laid out quickly, read below. There are spoilers, so don’t read this part if you don’t want to spoil the book plot for yourself. I personally don’t care about spoilers as sometimes I enjoy books or movies better when I know ahead of time what to watch for!
That being said, here is a quick synopsis of what happens with the actual itinerary:
- Harker goes to Dracula’s castle in the Carpathian Mountains. Dracula is weird and there are women there that attack him. He winds up sick and unconscious in a hospital in Budapest.
- Dracula takes a ship called the Demeter to England where he has purchased an estate house. He brings several boxes of earth from his homeland, Transylvania.
- The captain of the Demeter leaves a log behind which narrates how all the crew disappear or end up dead one at a time. At some point, he is alone, he binds himself to the ship/mast, and he arrives in port in England dead too.
- Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray are best friends. Lucy writes to Mina telling her she has been proposed to by three men: Dr. John Seward, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood. She chooses Holmwood but they all remain friends.
- Lucy invites Mina on vacation with her. Since Jonathan has gone to deliver real estate papers to Dracula, she joins Lucy on holiday in Whitby, which is where Dracula’s ship lands.
- Mina then receives a letter about her fiancé’s illness (Jonathan Harker) and she travels to Budapest to nurse him.
- While she’s gone, Lucy begins sleepwalking while still away in Whitby. Dracula stalks Lucy. Lucy becomes very ill but no one knows why.
- Professor Abraham Van Helsing comes to diagnose Lucy but he refuses to disclose the real reason for her illness. Instead, he diagnoses her with acute blood-loss. Van Helsing places garlic flowers around Lucy’s sick room and makes her a necklace of them. Her mother, who has no idea they are to ward off vampires, innocently removes them from Lucy and from the room.
- A wolf then shows up and terrifies Lucy and her mother. Mrs. Westenra dies of a heart attack. Then Lucy dies shortly thereafter.
- After Lucy’s burial, newspaper reports children being stalked in the night by a beautiful woman and Dr. Van Helsing deduces it is Lucy who has now arisen as a vampiress. He decides he has to do something.
- The four men (Van Helsing, Arthur Holmwood, Dr. John Seward, and Quincey Morris) go to Lucy’s tomb and see that she is now a vampire. They stake her heart, behead her, and fill her mouth with garlic. Lucy as a vampiress is now taken care of. The men now decide to go after Dracula too.
- Jonathan Harker and his now-wife Mina have returned to England and they join the campaign against Dracula.
- As they go off to hunt Dracula, they stay at Dr. Seward’s asylum. Van Helsing finally reveals to them that vampires can only rest on earth from their homeland.
- Dracula communicates with Sewart’s patient, Mr. Renfield, an insane man who eats flies, vermin, and birds to absorb their life force. He learns of the men’s plot against him and he uses Renfield to enter the asylum.
- He attacks Mina three times, drinking her blood and forcing her to drink his blood on the final visit. She is now cursed to become a vampire after her death unless Dracula is killed.
- After a search, the men find Dracula’s properties and they find many boxes of dirt (Transylvania earth) within. They open each box of earth and seal pieces of consecrated Catholic Hosts, sacramental bread, inside each box, now rendering them useless to Dracula.
- They try to trap the Count in his Piccadilly house but he escapes. They learn he is fleeing back to his castle in Transylvania with his last box of dirt.
- Van Helsing, knowing Mina still has at least a psychic connection to Dracula, hypnotizes her to track Dracula’s whereabouts on his escape route.
- In Galatz Romania, the group splits up. Dr. Van Helsing and Mina go to Dracula’s castle where the professor destroys the vampiresses.
- Jonathan Harker and Arthur Holmwood go off to find Dracula’s boat on the river, while Quincey Morris and John Seward parallel them on the land on the river bank.
- They find the box and once Dracula’s coffin is loaded onto a wagon by Romani men, the hunters converge and attack it. There is a big fight with the Romani men and Quincy is wounded.
- After catching up with the others, Harker decapitates Dracula as Quincy stakes him in the heart. Dracula crumbles to dust, freeing Mina from her vampiric curse.
- Quincy is mortally wounded in the fight against the Romani. He dies at peace knowing that Mina will be okay.
- Seven years later, there is a note indicating that the Harkers now have a son named Quincey.
WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THE BOOK:
Now that I got my negative review about telling a story with letters out of the way, I’ll go into what is great about the book. First of all, the story was so original. Even today, the story maintains its originality in it’s prose, it’s atmosphere and the storyline itself. It has lost nothing over the years. It reads as a historical novel, but it does not read as dated one bit.
As an author, I read in awe of Bram Stoker. There was no vampire genre at the time. There were similar horror-like creatures written about before Bram Stoken wrote this story, but in my humble opinion, 95% of his story is unique and pulled entirely from his imagination. This is why although there may have been one or two books written before his, Dracula is the one that kickstarted the entire vampire genre.
On top of the horror story about Dracula, the mini story about the mental patient Renfield could have been a follow-up book. It too was so original, fascinating, a classic horror tale.
Although I didn’t like the narrative device of using letters, the story itself was five stars. It was and still is a classic gothic vampire story. It contains all of the scary, errie, weird, unsettling, suspenseful and horrific elements, none of which are dated or have lost one bit of their effect. I have listed below some of my favorite turn of phrases and I hope you enjoy them.
IF I HAD TO READ THIS AGAIN:
If I had to or chose to read this book again, which I will, I would read through the narrative I pieced together above — from my own book notes and the help of Wikipedia for proper names — before starting out. This is another instance where I think a list of characters in the beginning of the novel would be helpful to the reader.
If the reader removes the job of trying to keep whose letters one is reading and what is happening before or simultaneously, it would make the story much more enjoyable.
MY FAVORITE TURN OF PHRASES:
- The road was rugged, but still we seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste.
- The dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road — a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear.
- At the first howl, the horses began to strain and rear, but the driver spoke to them soothingly, and they quieted down, but shivered and sweated as though after a runaway from sudden fright.
- Then, far off in the distance, from the mountains on each side of us began a louder and a sharper howling — that of wolves — which affected both the horses and myself in the same way — for I was minded to jump from the caleche and run, whilst they reared again and plunged madly, so that the driver had to use all his great strength to keep them from bolting.
- Blazed with a demonic fury . . .
- Made a grab at my throat
- This describes the last seaman who was found on the ship: The searchlight followed her (the ship), and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship.
CROSSWORD BASED ON DRACULA BY BRAM STOKER:
