Book Review: The Historian

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

The Historian     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Elizabeth Kostova
Class/Genre:   Fantasy   Mystery   Fiction   Horror   Vampire
Little, Brown & Co June 2005, 642 pages

THE HISTORIAN is a retelling of the Dracula legend, updated into the 20th century, but containing many of the elements of the Bram Stoker novel which still remains one of the most widely read horror stories of all time.

A diplomat, living and working in Amsterdam, is raising his young daughter on his own after her mother's death. The young woman is entering teenage and possessed of a high intelligence and unquenchable curiosity. One evening as she prepares her school assignments, she finds a cache of letters among her father's books. The letters hint at a long buried tragedy and in the next few years as she and her father travel together through Europe she gradually persuades him to tell the long supressed story.

Portrayed largely through letters and flashbacks to the 1930's and then to the 1950's, the trail of Dracula leads the characters to Cambridge Massachusetts, southern France, Istanbul, Hungary, Roumania and finally Bulgaria.

The search follows a trail of historical research into long forgotten texts, poetry, letters, diaries, and oral legends. The book is an engrossing read, perhaps overlong in spots, especially in descriptions of the many locales visited by the searching scholars.

Woodstock - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Woodstock - RAM