The Historian is one whopper of a book, but it's worth every page and every word. It is the haunting tale of a young woman, a historian, who one day finds a book and some letters on the shelf of her father's library. The book is very old and is blank, except for a woodcut image in the middle of a dragon and the word "Drakulya". She asks her father about the book and the letters and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian unfolds.
Paul, the narrator's father who is also a historian, one day discovers the previously mentioned book and consults his dissertation adviser, Professor Rossi about it. He learns that his professor has also been "given" one of these mysterious books and has done some extensive research on it. Danger lies in the acquiring of these books. Rossi's research has taught him that Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula, still walks among us as a vampire. Shortly after revealing this to Paul, Rossi disappears. Paul digs deeper and deeper into the Dracula legend and history and begins to learn that there is more truth than myth to vampires. Along the way, he meets Helen, an anthropologist from Romania who is also interested in vampires and Dracula. Paul leaves America to find Rossi as he is convinced that the book leaves a clue as to his whereabouts and Helen joins him in his travels.
The above paragraph has happened in the past, but takes up the majority of the book. It is told through a very long letter that the narrator's father has written her. The narrator herself is on her own hunt. She certainly has her own interest in the hunt for Dracula, but she is hunting for more knowledge on her father's mysterious past, and even more so, she is hunting for the mother that she never knew.
The Historian hits all the right marks. It's written very well and has a very gothic feel to it. It was an extremely creepy book and the atmosphere was just perfect...old books left in dark places, empty libraries at night, old gothic buildings with people lurking in the shadows, and all of the scenes in Turkey, Hungary, and Romania were just perfect. In fact, I've never really considered wanting to visit any of these places until Kostova wrote about them and some of the amazing architecture, churches, cafes, and festivals in these countries.
I loved Kostova's characters...or loved to hate some of them. Either way, she knows how to create an interesting character. The love story between Paul and Helen was remarkable and something that I cherished and enjoyed every time I got a peek at it. I wished that I could've spent a little more time with the narrator of the book, and that is one of my only criticisms of the novel...that I didn't get to know her better. The different characters that Paul and Helen meet along the way that help them in their journey were wonderful -Rossi, Turgut, and Stoichev were all classic old scholars whom I really enjoyed and would love to sit down with and have a cup of tea and study their libraries.
For me, this novel was everything that a horror novel should be. The subject matter is certainly there - vampires, more specifically, the grand-daddy of all vampires, Dracula. There's a constant sense of foreboding, mystery, shadows lurking in the darkness, being a step away from a dark discovery. The best way to describe the book is that it is a modern gothic, mystery novel. Some may say that things fall into place a little too easily in this one...and at times they do, but it's fiction...and in fiction, that's just fine with me. Kostova has created a riveting novel that kept me up many nights because I just couldn't put it down. I can't wait to see what she does with the rest of her career!
