A Cup of Coffee

The Historian

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Literature & Fiction
Author:	Elizabeth Kostova

I was attracted to this book by a review I read on USA Today while I was staying at the Dolphin. By a strange coincidence, this was the day I was going to shop at Barnes and Noble. I couldn't resist to what seemed to be a very promising vampire tale starred by the sharpest vampire of all, Count Dracula himself. This is the first novel of writer Kostova, and she does a pretty good job in general. Her epic novel spans three generations, and alternates action that happened in the 30s, 50s and 70s seemlessly. It all starts when a teen girl discovers amid her father's papers a strange book and letters written to "My dear and unfortunate sucessor". The tales that unfolds is the search of three different generations of historian to the actual site of Vlad Tepes tomb, the real life count Dracula.
It is a long book, with over 700 pages, but it goes down quite fast, especially because the writer uses wisely different narrators, letters, and even essays to put her story together. The author manages to build a growing sense of doom and horror, and the vampire is exactly what a vampire should be: bloodthirsty, slightly elegant, smart, cruel. I also appreciated the way all the stories come together at the very ending. Still she left me with quite a few unanswered questions. And I have to warn potential readers that most of the story is not made of action, action, action, but of discoveries made in archives and through the reading of documents. It is subtler. You start fearing what you still don't know.
All in all, this is a very good read, and I kept telling myself that I was going to read a few more pages each night, and ended up awake till late. Have that garlic handy.

posted by Livia de Almeida @ 8:40 AM