The Historian- Dracula 2.0

Since Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, thousands of stories, books, stage plays, films, and TV series have been based on his tale. Success in recapturing Stoker's magic varies wildly, from cheesy B flicks to imaginative reinventions of vampire lore such as Joss Whedon's Buffyverse. But I've only read one novel that comes close to the voyeuristic thrill of reading the letters and journal entries of Lucy, Mina, Johnathan, Dr. Seward- and that is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Like Stoker, Kostova's tale is at once about powerful supernatural forces and the very personal lives disrupted by them. Kostova ups the drama of learning the story in scraps of journal entries, letters, and stories by scattering these sources through three distinct time lines. Further, Kostova develops the idea of epistolary storytelling by making the revelatory documents, themselves, magical. If you love libraries, the scent of old books, the thrill of unfolding a brittle, yellowed map, this book is for you.

It is interesting to note that The Historian, on the New York Times bestseller list in 2005, awarded the Book Sense Adult Fiction "Book of the Year" award in 2006, is actually set in 2008! In our near-future "present" a woman tells us the story of how her family was torn apart by Vlad Tepes (aka Dracula). Our narrator's part in the tale unfolds when she was a young woman in the early 1970's. The narrator is chasing after her father, who in turn is in pursuit of her long-lost mother. The narrator delves into events involving her father before her birth in the 1950's. Her 1950's history major father, in his turn, must go back in time to the 1930's to learn the fate of his mentor. And so, from generation to generation, the historians of the family are inducted, shaking with equal doses of fear and pique, into the knowledge of Dracula.

If, like me, you've ever spent a rainy day sunk deep in a library chair, rereading Bram Stoker's Dracula for one more delicious taste of his characters and his mastery of the art of suspense, then grab a copy of The Historian- it's Dracula 2.0, and a ton of fun for fans of Dracula.