Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

If you didn’t already know (let’s face it, you probably do by now!) a goal of mine for 2020 was to read more. That led me to create a list of “classics” to read, as well as a list of more modern books, and I’ve got through a few so far: Little Women, Emma, Pride and Prejudice and The Picture of Dorian Gray. A few days ago, I finished another classic on my list: Dracula by Bram Stoker.

This book has been on my list for a while. I love anything classic, dark with a bit of Gothicness (that’s probably not a word but we’ll go with it!) and this book definitely delivered on all of those aspects. Stoker wasn’t mentioned whilst I was at uni, probably because all of the Gothic modules in third year got cancelled at the last minute (which I’m still not over to be honest!), so I knew I definitely had to add this book to the list and give it a go.

The novel is written in epistolary form, so it follows different characters in the form of letters, diary entries, newspaper stories and log entries, and it follows an array of different characters. I haven’t read many novels in this form but, for the most part, I loved the style of it – it felt much more interesting, and easier to follow than other classics that seem to be full of dialogue. Whilst I found some characters a little tedious, and some of the parts a little boring to read, for the most part this book kept me interested and I loved the suspense around it.

Character wise, a few stood out to me. I really liked Jonathan Harker (who, I admit, I thought was a priest for the majority of the book!) and I loved the relationship between Harker and Mina. I also quite liked Mina’s friend, Lucy, who definitely didn’t have a great time over the course of the novel, that’s for sure. I also, maybe not surprisingly, liked Dracula. I’ve seen so many incarnations of this character that I had no idea what the original was like but I found him entertaining, quite funny but also quite irritating. The rest of the characters, I’m not going to lie, were pretty forgettable for me. I think, for me at least, having too many characters to follow sometimes spoils the reading experience. Thankfully, it didn’t spoil my reading of this book at all.

I liked this book. I liked the way it was written and, for the most part, I found the narrative entertaining and exciting. Though it was a bit tedious at times, I was hooked from the outset and I had to keep reading until the end.