ISBN:014143984XBook Description
The vampire novel that started it all, Bram Stoker's Dracula probes deeply into human identity, sanity, and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client. Soon afterward, disturbing incidents unfold in England-an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby, strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck, and a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his "Master"-culminating in a battle of wits between the sinister Count and a determined group of adversaries./p>
Reviews From AMAZON.COM
Best I've read in a long time.
Out of all the books I have ever read, Stoker's "Dracula" ranks among my favorite for several reasons.
1) "Dracula" is, of course, a classic, not to mention the Queen Mother of all twentieth-century vampire/horror/gothic fiction literature. You feel good when you read it because you know that you are reading of THE Count Dracula, not some modern-day spin-off.
2) The story and emotional content is developed far enough that the characters - the Count just as equally, if not more - become almost iconic, having exhaustingly defined personalities of their own that effect a sort of sympathy (or apathy) in readers' minds for them that is seldom seen in such depth even among classics, much less in some "modern" novels.
3) Sure, it's no novella, but there are enough "side-quests" (to employ some video game nomenclature) to keep track of, that the plot moves along at just the right pace. The fact that the whole book is a compilation of various characters' diaries, journals, phonograph records, notes, memos, legal documents, etc. just helps to develop the story and characters further, yielding the ability for the reader to see things from multiple perspectives (though witholding any redundancy).
If you're looking for something good to read that will keep you thinking, read "Dracula"; I had some time to kill and picked it up, then hardly put it down afterwards until I finished. You won't be disappointed.
Still Chilling Gothic Story (Penguin Classics Revised Edition)
Of course you know the story of Dracula. Or you think you know it, the tale of this blood-sucking Count and the damsels in Victorian costume. The fact is the Dracula you find in the original book is far from the images you have from Bell Lugosi, Gary Oldman, or inimitable Christopher Lee. Read the book, and you know Count Dracula is in fact more like a reptile (he can climb down the wall of a building like a lizard), and his very bad breath.
The book written in 1897 can still provide some good scares here and there, but these scares belong to the tradition of Gothic stories. The story gets most macabre when it tells about the fate of bitten Lucy, which is still shocking to many readers. Except that and some other chilling episodes (such as bloofer lady in the graveyard) the story may be a little slack by today's standard, and the ending might not be what you expect.
[WRITING STYLE] Well, I don't have much to add about the tale of the Count itself. I only say that the whole book consists of diaries, journals, letters, clips from newspapers, etc. written by the characters such as Jonathan Harker and his sweetheart Mina. If you're not accustomed to the style, you might find it irritating at first, but you get used to it sooner or later.
[CHILD BRAIN?] The book's Van Helsing is not Peter Cushing or Hugh Jackman. The real eminent professor is older, more talkative, and most of all, has curious sense of humor which he calls King Laugh. He introduces several methods to protect the ladies from the vampire (like garlic flowers), but some part of his erudition (including brief reference to `nosferatu') sound very strange today. According to Helsing, Dracula has a `child-brain' and that's the reason the Count cannot outwit the humans. His idea sounds bizarre today, but to understand it you need to keep im mind that the book was written for the readers who shared the now discredited, turn-of-the-century ideas about psychology or criminology. In short, Helsing is not joking. He means it as the author Bram Stoker.
[PENGUIN EDITION] FROM HERE THE REVIREW IS ABOUT THE PENGUIN CLASSICS EDITION. For the new edition of Penguin Classics, Maurice Hindle revised his introduction. The new introduction is readable and informative, and puts the book in its historical context. This edition also provides appendix - 1) Bram Stoker's Correspondence with Walt Whitman: 2) Charlotte Stoker's Account of `The Cholera Horror' in a Letter to Bram Stoker [Charlotte is Bram Stoker's mother]: 3) Bram Stoker's Article `The Censorship of Fiction': 4) Bram Stoker's Interview with Winston Churchill.
But probably you should start reading the book first without any knowledge, and enjoy its Gothic world. Though Bram Stoker wrote more than ten books (and some of them are better than you expect, like `The Jewel of the Seven Stars') it is because of Count Dracula and his chilling story that he earned the reputation, and the book tells you why.