Ha, that's always the problem I have with epistolary novels
Darth_Katie Send a noteboard - 23/01/2011 05:15:58 PM
I am, however, conflicted about the characters. On the one hand, they’re quite nice to read: upstanding, brave, loving men, and clever, courageous women. Dracula’s evil is quite chilling. But they’re also only one-sided. There’s no depth and no contrast to them. Either they’re fully good – all of the good guys – or they’re fully bad: Dracula and his brides. The one character with ambiguity and shade is madman Renfield; he’s rather fascinating, and I think that Stoker enjoyed writing him.
Yup, the characters are definitely the weak point.
I also got a little annoyed by the way Van Helsing speaks. At first it was quite nice because that is how many Dutch people speak English (I grew up with lots of them, being of Dutch extraction myself), but would all three journal writers (Mina, Johnathan and Dr Seward) really have taken down his words exactly as he said them, complete with the errors non-native speakers make? That doesn’t feel realistic.
Who writes stuff down in the kind of detail that appears in novels? NOBODY. No one would ever write like that, it's very silly. But suspension of disbelief and everything.
More than the way he talked, I was annoyed by the hugely long self-righteous monologues Van Helsing kept going on, for pages and pages. The treatment of Mina by all the men was also pretty irritating to me, but it was written in the 1800s, so what are you going to do?
Insert theme music here.
Dracula by Bram Stoker: the definitive vampire novel.
- 23/01/2011 01:09:49 PM
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And a wee apology:
- 23/01/2011 01:11:12 PM
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Re: And a wee apology:
- 23/01/2011 01:14:03 PM
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Re: No no, I liked it, I thought it was thinky and evocative of thinkyness! *NM*
- 24/01/2011 08:39:29 PM
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Okay. I'll have to pick this up.
- 23/01/2011 01:14:01 PM
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I had one bad night the first time I read it. 
- 23/01/2011 01:15:22 PM
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- 23/01/2011 01:15:22 PM
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I've been wanting to read Dracula for a while.
- 23/01/2011 01:18:49 PM
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It has been a while since I read it (should probably do something about that), but I think I agree.
- 23/01/2011 01:23:10 PM
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I have a copy here if you want to borrow. (I read it on my Kindle this time.)
- 23/01/2011 01:32:59 PM
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Since Camilla mentioned the topic of where one reads books...
- 23/01/2011 01:58:41 PM
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Heh.
- 23/01/2011 02:01:32 PM
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THEY WERE NEVER BRITISH!!! THEY STILL AREN'T; 36+6+1!!!!!!
- 23/01/2011 05:06:42 PM
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You know, I have to agree with Cannoli, though without the all caps and the queen-fucking.
- 23/01/2011 10:48:36 PM
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I won't be as mad as Cannoli, or pedantic as Tom but it is an Irish novel
- 23/01/2011 11:11:05 PM
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Ha, that's always the problem I have with epistolary novels
- 23/01/2011 05:15:58 PM
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here there are no misunderstood pacifist bloodsuckers, supernatural heroes or sparkles.
- 24/01/2011 08:42:54 AM
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A fun little travel piece about Whitby, where an important part of Dracula is set.
- 25/01/2011 12:44:46 PM
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