
'The Historian' by Elizabeth Kostova is a novel that weaves together the legend of Dracula with a multi-generational story of a man and his daughter on a quest to find their missing wife and mother. The book offers a mix of thriller and historical fiction, delving into medieval history, Vlad the Impaler's life, and Cold War Europe. The narrative spans across different locations in Southern Europe, the Balkans, and Turkey, providing a rich and detailed travelogue that keeps the reader engaged.
The writing style of 'The Historian' is described as meticulous and descriptive, evoking a strong sense of atmosphere and setting, particularly in its detailed descriptions of places and historical events. The novel involves multiple narrators and points of view, adding complexity to the story and creating a sense of suspense and mystery. Despite some slow parts and occasional challenges with suspension of disbelief, the book offers a unique take on the vampire genre, blending elements of history, folklore, and literary fiction.
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From The Publisher:
Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of-a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known-and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself-to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed-and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign-and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions-and evading the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad's ancient powers-one woman comes ever closer to the secret of her own past and a confrontation with the very definition of evil. Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel is an adventure of monumental proportions, a relentless tale that blends fact and fantasy, history and the present, with an assurance that is almost unbearably suspenseful-and utterly unforgettable.
Ratings (78)
Incredible (16) | |
Loved It (25) | |
Liked It (15) | |
It Was OK (14) | |
Did Not Like (5) | |
Hated It (3) |
Reader Stats (196):
Read It (80) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (92) | |
Did Not Finish (6) | |
Not Interested (17) |
3 comment(s)
It isn't often that I sit down to read a slower-paced work of fiction. But this one, this one brings one of my favorite mythical figures, Dracula, into a new perspective. Immortality, as a subject, has always fascinated me. So many things I didn't know about those European lands brought to me new appreciation for humanity's rich historical background.
My great hope in making this story public is that it may find at least one reader who will understand it for what it actually is: a cri de coeur. To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.
My dear and unfortunate successor: I was hoping that Kostova would do for vampire hunters what Susanna Carke did for English magicians or A. S. Byatt did for Victorian poets. But
The Historian is no
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell or
Possession: what started out as a promising read (one that might not be written by an author with the same mastery as Clarke or Byatt but was intriguing enough for me to add other books by Kostova to my TBR) devolved as it went until, if I’m being honest, the sunk cost fallacy was the main thing that kept me reading.
In a presumed homage to Stoker, the novel is structured in an epistolary format, with the main character recording her own story along with that of her father (told primarily in letters that she reads and records) and her father’s mentor (told through his journal as copied by her father in the letters that she reads and records), with a couple of other letters and primary sources. And for some reason, Kostova has opted to enclose the entirety of the father’s letters—which make up the bulk of the book—in quotation marks, which is ugly and distracting to read and makes dialogue and other quotations even more awkward. It also has the unfortunate consequence of constantly reminding the reader that the narration purports to be a letter, even though it is obviously not mimicking the way a real person would actually write. This is, of course, almost always the case with epistolary novels or they would be exceedingly dry, but Kostova’s formatting never lets the reader suspend disbelief: it’s impossible to do so when every paragraph is preceded by a quotation mark.
This journal-within-a-letter-within-a-record can also get difficult to follow, but this has less to do with the format and more to do with the fact that every single narrator
sounds exactly the same (despite living in different time periods with extremely different backgrounds and presumably different personalities), each of them follow more or less the same storyline, and each storyline is incredibly repetitive. They travel to an exotic locale, visit a library or monastery or a scholar’s home, are introduced at length to a new academic, read a bunch of letters or manuscripts, rinse and repeat. For 700 pages. Simultaneously each storyline features a (terrible) romance that follows the formula of boy meets girl, boy and girl search for Dracula, boy and girl decide they're in love. (Note that “boy and girl
fall in love” is missing, because it’s never clear why either party likes the other beyond being attractive and of the opposite sex. They just suddenly declare their love for each other and great, now it’s a romance. In one case the happy couple doesn’t even speak the same language and have to communicate by miming. And don’t even get me started on the age gaps that I guess the author doesn’t have any problem with…..)
The plot points that
are unique are generally, to put it bluntly, incredibly stupid.
One relationship falls apart because of amnesia, another because Helen just decides to ghost her family and let them think she’s dead for, what, 15 years, which is painted as an act of self-sacrifice? It’s insane. There’s a fairly graphic and completely unnecessary depiction of miscarriage. The blank books with the dragon woodcut in the center mean nothing and have no purpose
. Even the end, which may be the best part because
at least something finally happens, is tonally dissonant, more in the vein of
Indiana Jones or
The Mummy with its
hidden crypts and libraries, untimely interruption by (random) bad guys, and…priceless treasure? They’re treasure hunters now? There’s no way that’s legal
. And then, of course, there’s Dracula’s revealed motivation, which is hilariously bad.
However,
The Historian’s ultimate failing is its characters. In the hands of a Clarke or Byatt, this same plot with these same characters (in name and role) could have made for an engaging, nuanced, emotionally compelling novel. Instad, the characters are empty shells. I expect that readers are supposed to wonder which of the many, many historians is referenced in the title, but it doesn’t matter because they’re all basically the same with the same voice and personality trait. Kostova latches on to a few questionable character traits—for example, she gets the idea that Turgut, a foreign scholar who studies Shakespeare, speaks in archaic English—but otherwise they are indistinguishable from one another.
Their emotional reactions are consistently, jarringly out of sync with the way a real human would react. Seeing a dead body puts a child in the hospital for a couple of nights. On character
said, ‘Oui, oui,’ on the in-breath, as if she were talking to herself, which—what? But some of the most absurd examples come at the climax:
the narrator meets her long-lost and presumed dead mother Helen, and Helen meets and kills
her long-lost and presumed dead father Rossi, with almost no reaction; Paul tells dying vampire Rossi that he’s going to marry Helen, Rossi’s child who Rossi only just remembered existed and with whom Rossi has no relationship, and Rossi’s reaction is
‘That’s—good,’ he said finally
.
Kostova equally fails to bring heart or emotional realism to the quieter moments. Her characters’ many monologues are instead generally spent discussing/revealing various historical discoveries, which are just not that interesting to me—though it seems like
Kostova was most interested in this element and creating an alternative history with its various supporting documents, and not creating characters or telling a story.
The characters are also
incredibly thick and weirdly apathetic about the potential existence of vampires. Some examples:
Paul is absolutely shocked to learn that Helen Rossi and Professor Rossi are related, even though they share a last name. When Paul confesses to Helen that he thinks vampires are real he stops short of telling her he thinks he saw someone with bite marks on their neck because he thinks
that will be the part she doesn’t believe. When Helen herself is bitten for the first time, she doesn’t seem especially upset and is still unconvinced that vampires are real—in fact, she doesn’t really even talk about it much, even to wonder wonder why some random guy
bit her on the neck
.
The one area where Kostova shows promise, and what initially made me so hopeful, is in descriptions. Her travel writing is at times transporting, with exotic settings and meals (the food writing is really fantastic) carefully laid out. Unfortunately, after a while, they all start to sound the same. Every setting is a bit cliche: the monasteries, libraries, mosques, universities, trains, etc. are all more or less what one would expect. And beyond that, it’s all unnecessary and feels like window dressing.
I’m oscillating between 1 and 2 stars for my rating. Since I feel like I need to reserve a rating for books that are almost offensively bad, like
Hell Bent or
On Chesil Beach (which I gave two stars to but shouldn't have), I’ll round up to 2. After all, for all its flaws,
The Historian’s biggest is probably its blandness, which puts it a category above my one-star reads.
Some favorite passages:
As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it.
I stirred my tea, and the breeze pulled the steam out to sea.
“And I grant you that anyone who pokes around in history long enough may well go mad.”
As an adult, I have often known that peculiar legacy time brings to the traveler: the longing to seek out a place a second time, to find deliberately what we stumbled on once before, to recapture the feeling of discovery. Sometimes we search out again even a place that was not remarkable in itself—we look for it simply because we remember it. If we do find it, of course, everything is different. The rough-hewn door is still there, but it’s much smaller; the day is cloudy instead of brilliant; it’s spring instead of autumn; we’re alone instead of with three friends. Or, worse, with three friends instead of alone.
We entered it from the street through brass-studded wooden doors. The windows were covered with a tracery of marble; sunlight filtered through them in fine geometric shapes, decorating the floor of the dim entryway with fallen stars and octagons.
An old man in a black beret passed us with a young woman on his arm. She had beautifully coiffed red hair and wore pink lipstick, and I imagined for a moment trading places with her. Oh, to look like that, to be Parisian, to be grown-up and have high-heeled boots and real breasts and an elegant, aging artist at your side! Then it occurred to me that he might be her father, and I felt very lonely.
It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part 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.
He smiled as he bent over with the tea, and I could smell his strange odor, which made me feel sick and faint. You may laugh, my friend, but it was a little like an odor that I have always found pleasant under other circumstances—the smell of old books. You know that smell—it is parchment and leather, and—something else?
The fortress had been a small one, I saw at once, and had long since been abandoned to the elements; wildflowers of every description, lichens, moss, fungus, and stunted, windblown trees had made their ancient home in it. The two towers that still stood were bony silhouettes against the sky.
For a moment I was hypnotized by the midmorning vibration of leaves and bees, and by an unexpected, sickening feeling of dread.
One evening I let a stranger buy me a round of a local speciality called, whimsically, amnesia, with the result that I was sick all the next day.”’
Helen, will you marry me?’ “She turned slowly in my direction, and I wondered if I was seeing astonishment, amusement, or pleasure on her face. ‘Paul,’ she said sternly. ‘How long have we known each other?’ “‘Twenty-three days,’ I admitted.
There is almost nothing worse than a much-loved face transformed by death, or physical decay, or horrifying illness. Those faces are monsters of the most frightening kind—the unbearable beloved.
‘Please take care of her, Paul,’ he said faintly. “‘I’m going to marry her,’ I told him. I put my hand on his chest. There was a kind of inhuman wheezing inside it, but I made myself hold him there. “‘That’s—good,’ he said finally. ‘Is her mother alive and well?’
By the sparse light of our candles I began to see things I had not been able to see before—wonderful things. I could now make out long tables before me, tables of an ancient solidity. And on these lay piles and piles of books—crumbling leather-bound volumes and gilt covers that picked up the glimmer of my candle flame. There were other objects, too—never had I seen such an inkstand, or such strange quills and pens. There was a stack of parchment, glimmering in the candlelight, and an old typewriter supplied with thin paper. I saw the gleam of jewelled bindings and boxes, the curl of manuscripts in brass trays. There were great folios and quartos bound in smooth leather, and rows of more modern volumes on long shelves. In fact, we were surrounded; every wall seemed to be lined with books. Holding up my candle, I began to make out titles here and there, sometimes an elegant bloom of Arabic in the center of a red-leather binding, sometimes a Western language I could read. Most of the volumes were too old to have titles, however. It was a storehouse beyond compare, and I began to itch in spite of myself to open some of those books, to touch the manuscripts in their wooden trays.
“I have been waiting a long time for someone to catalogue my library,” he said simply.
“Your second task will be much larger. In fact, it will last forever. When you know my library and its purposes as intimately as I do, you will go out into the world, under my command, and search for new acquisitions—and old ones, too, for I shall never stop collecting from the works of the past. I will put many archivists at your disposal—the finest of them—and you shall bring more under our power.”
“With your unflinching honesty, you can see the lesson of history,” he said. “History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is not perfectible, but evil is.
Together we will advance the historian’s work beyond anything the world has ever seen.
Way too slow.
About the Author:
Elizabeth Kostova is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow Land, The Swan Thieves, and The Historian. She graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award for Novel-in-Progress. She is…
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