The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
Odd rich literate vampire novel
(Review posted 20 Apr 2006 22:56:01)

Let's leave aside here the fact that I seem to have accidentally read a best-seller that was the subject of a huge marketing campaign and, I gather from having looked around the web after reading it, a certain amount of controversy. We'll pretend it's just a book.

It's a difficult book in some ways, somewhat slow and languidly-moving, and sometimes difficult to follow in the "narrator's account of reading a letter that her father wrote her from Vienna about a book that his beloved teacher found when he was a student in Belgrade in the 1930s that seemed to suggest that..." sense. There are multiple overlapping and interlocking stories spread across many years and a few continents, and it can get confusing. But it never gets too bad; mostly it's either possible to keep track of exactly what's going on, or it's not necessary to keep track in order to enjoy the world.

The strongest parts of the book, to my mind, are the subtlest. The quiet beauty of old European cities and Balkan countrysides; a tired man and his loving daughter sitting on a bench at twilight; arriving in a small boat on a little island monastery set in a moutain lake; a vague feeling of disquiet in the air.

Correspondingly, the weakest parts are the least subtle: disappearing wives, evil vampires, bodies found in ancient sarcophagi. These things were almost a distraction for me; I don't think the book would have suffered if we'd never actually met a vampire (although the image of Dracula as avid book-collector was fun!), or if the disappearing wife hadn't actually disappeared (the explanation for her disappearing when we finally get it is utterly unconvincing), or if we'd never found out what really happened to Rossi.

But I shouldn't complain too much. It's a good book, with moments of real feeling and quiet joy. And if it also illustrates that a book like that can have vampires in it too, maybe we've learned something interesting.