"To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history...."The blurb on the back of the book really tantalises you to think that this will be a book you just can’t put down. Unfortunately, I was all too aware that I did put it down more than is usual to help peel potatoes (at the supposed crucial climatic moment towards the end) and on reflection, I realised that I started reading it AGES ago and that it never really gripped me, though the concept and the plot were all ripe for my undying attention. As my family will testify, if I have within my hands a book that is really compelling, you will not get anything out of me until the concluding paragraph.
So overall I would say I am disappointed. I feel as if I have been educated on a part of history I didn’t know and that I have been preached to about the role of history and evil, etc in the world, but I have not been won over on this topic (as much as I would like to have been) or on the sometimes preachy tone. I am a historian, or would like to be. This book did not spur me on the course to find out more about Vlad Tepes/Dracula any more than Buffy, Twilight and Anne Rice’s An Interview With A Vampire did. I really am a vampire-fan and total saddo historian- WHY DID THIS BOOK NOT WOW ME????
Kostova combines the search for Dracula based in historical fact with the literary Dracula from Stoker’s Victorian novel. This combination hopes to make the reader feel that Dracula from Stoker’s pages was/is a real living thing because the supernatural is backed by historical documented evidence. This is nicely enveloped with the fact that this version of Dracula has a penchant for librarians, historians and archivists. YAY I say- let me join!!
The story starts with a young woman finds an ancient book in her father’s library, which catapults her into a dark past of bloody tales, secrets and mysteries that at the heart are connected to Vlad the Impaler a.k.a Dracula. The quest that unravels from the finding of this book is centuries old: to find the source of evil (I think) and wipe it out. To do this, the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula, needs to be uncovered. Three generations of historians (adviser, students (father and mother) and daughter (the narrator)) have and will search for clues all over the places from monasteries to archives in universities and large cities all over the world.
In what almost promises to be a gothic delight with Dracula, old dusty books and historians/librarians running amok I find it a heavy, clunking thriller that unfortunately never really picks up pace and can bore those not already converted to the greatness of knowing and learning about history.
Kostova has a good sense of time and place and knowledge of history moving from Amsterdam, 1970s Oxford, to 1930s Romania, 1950s Cold War Budapest and Bulgaria, France and Philadelphia, US, in the 20th century. Although her sense of these places and time rings true and certainly well researched, at times it fails to follow through into the text. For example an Oxford lecturer in 1930s sounds not so different from the narrator in 1970s. The tone and phrasing of the characters is not that different when it should be. When the difference is noted it is with an uneasy and faltering hand. Helen (principal narrator’s mother Romanian/Bulgarian) speaks with clumsy mistakes highlighted by a correction by another character such as “a blink of sleep” as opposed to “a wink”. It started off as a nice touch but it just became a way of singling Helen out as different when failing to mark all the other characters out as unique.
The Historian, as a novel, is a mixture of genres from gothic, to a thriller, a travelogue, and historical fiction whilst also being an adventure and detective novel. It has all the right elements to make this book unique and gripping. Kostova wanted to write a serious literary piece and it does have a didactic tone shown through the questioning of the role history has in society and how it is represented (something that has interested me for a long time). It is argued during the course of the novel that the knowledge of history is power, especially as it is written in books.... at this point I hark back to George Orwell as his famous quote that ‘the victors write history’ (paraphrased very badly I am sure by me- apologies).
The title of the book “The Historian” is very much that- a title. It displays power and knowledge. It can refer to any of the characters in the book, but most of all Dracula/Vlad. With history comes with it a lot of books (I know this to be true!!) and this novel encompasses a love of books. Each of the characters is drawn to books and the written word. Each character is a scholar. Even Dracula is a bibliophile and a wannabe scholar. Through Dracula we come to see what the price of this love of books and knowledge can be- Power, but obsession too.
There is one quote of this book I would like to insert here, which really alerted me to the underlying didactic purpose of this book:
“It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests they become more and more a part of us.”
The characters of the book are interested in Dracula and his history because that in some way relates to a part of them. However, it is that medium which separates them JUST from being like Dracula. They look at it through the scholarly mind, but the lure will always be there. At the end, when the narrator returns to a library to research again (reminiscing) that the librarian returns her forgotten notebook and the book with a dragon inside it- like the one she first found. It begs the question whether Dracula lives because there is always someone interested in it, willing to dig around for the occult/supernatural/evil?
So this question leads me on to another theme of the book- the contemplation of the nature of good and evil. The book does make us think what is evil and why does it exist. Dracula’s thoughts on this matter are clear: “History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is never perfectible, but evil is. Why should you not use your great mind in service of what is perfectible?...You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you.”
Dracula is the metaphor for evil in this book and it is implied that he has had a hand in what happened in Nazi Germany and supports socialism. Evil comes into many themes like socialism such as religion (Christians versus Muslims). Although neither side is exempt from evil deeds, it is Islam that comes out on top. Muslims, or a secret sect of them, have been trying to fight the evil Dracula, whilst Christianity in the form of monks has tried to help him. In the end Dracula is killed. Or is he? I am not sure, and although the book ends on this wavering question, the readers are just not that convinced. However, it has made me think and write this blog... so who knows?
A review on Amazon states, quite accurately I think, that “this is quietly a good book rather than a spectacular debut” and although I read it, I understood it and it made me think... it just lacks that special quality that will make me pick it up again.
2 comments:
NSSM - I like the quote. I think there is always a problem for historians which isn't about facts as such - but about selection. It's infernally difficult to be completely objective - and in history the problem is compounded by the way the facts are selected and marshalled to 'tell the story'. For all history is a story; the historian's story - which is the search to verify an interpretation, a vision, a point of view, and which can so easily shift into justification. Be on your guard when you start your own studies.
Autobiography, of course, is even harder - for the same reason.
OF
I really liked the quote too, and I think that is what I like about History. History is about people and not just about the people in the history a historian would write about. It also tells the history of the historian. A historian will choose the facts and ideas and concepts which they feel to be the most accurate according to them- their own life will dictate what they know, what they believe etc and this has a bearing on what chose to write about.
It applies to me as much as anyone.
It does beg the question is objectivity even possible... everyone will think of objectivity differently. The best we can hope for is lots of narratives, lots of opinions and then you can form your own opinion of what happened... I like to think of newspapers and the media- watch and read different things about the same topic eg. the terrorist attack in Spain, or the number of deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan and we have the base of history.
Anyway... signing off before I descend into complete nonsense!!!!!!
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