Jeri Smith-Ready

Book bloggin': The Historian

Elizabeth Kostova took ten years to write her blockbuster debut, The Historian, and I have to say, not a moment of that decade was wasted.

The Historian is a classic novel in the tradition of Dickens, Melville, or Conrad (none of which rank among my favorite authors). It's a book you can happily sink into for days. Seeing its 642-page length, I figured it would take me the full three weeks of my library borrowing time to finish it, but I polished it off in less than a week (actually four days, because on two days I was too busy to read at all). I read it twice as quickly as "fast-paced" novels half its length.

Looking back, I'm not sure what was so captivating about it. It's basically a mystery in which several characters trace the origins and current whereabouts of Dracula by sifting through old books and archives. Woo, sounds action-packed, doesn't it? But I was mesmerized by their search, which resulted in a substantial body count--every time someone got close to the truth, they or someone close to them ended up dead. I noticed my eyes widening and jaw dropping as I turned the pages, like a little kid reading her first ghost story.

Judging by the reviews, it's not for everyone. It was definitely a change of pace for me, which may have been why I enjoyed it so much; my brain was starving for some real sustenance. Though it's not "literary" in the contemporary sense of having an experimental style or characters who feel no emotion whatsoever, it is very well written in the classic sense of telling a great story while providing lush description and background. If you love history or historical fiction, you'll eat this up.

The only problem is, now I have an unquenchable desire to visit Eastern Europe. Oh well. It's probably one place where the dollar still goes far.

• posted by Jeri @ 8:30 AM
• 2 comments