“I am here to do Your bidding, Master. I am Your slave…”
I am gobsmacked. I know I say this a lot, and the Lord of the Rings often ends up creeping back to first place, but this time I mean it: Dracula is absolutely and unequivocally the best book I have ever read.
Published in 1897 by Irish author Bram Stoker, it was proclaimed by the Daily Mail at the time to be a “classic of Gothic horror”. It’s proved not just to be the classic horror book of all time, but a true classic of all fiction.
The first word which springs to mind when thinking of Dracula is “atmospheric”. Stoker creates a book which is so, so atmospheric. In the first 90% of the book the word Vampire is only written a dozen or so times, but it’s still implicit within all of the book. To a Victorian audience the book would have been truly terrifying, I’m sure.
It’s so, so well written. Stoker weaves horror narratives as good as Poe or Mary Shelley or anyone else. He really is a master of fiction and especially the horror genre. In fact, the portion of the book which takes place in Castle Dracula is true literary perfection…
And it is fantastically Victorian British too. When two men have to wake a sleeping lady to check if she’s alive, they first discuss for a minute how rude it is to break in to a sleeping ladies room and the best way to go about it.
Stoker plays on society’s greatest fears and explores the human psyche brilliantly. This isn’t just a vampire novel in which people run screaming from the Count. This is deep. Very deep. And long too. My particular copy is some 460 pages of very small writing. But, it rushes to its final incredible climax like an action movie.
OK, I’m gushing a little bit and getting perhaps a little over excited. But, I just loved Dracula. Loved Dracula. It’s a masterpiece.
Just read it.