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CONNIE TELLS THE WORLD WHAT TURNS HER ON


Christina called me up about a week ago and insisted that I go out and lay down hard cold cash for a hardcover book (something I usually only do for my friends’ books and George R.R. Martin) called THE HISTORIAN by Elizabeth Kostova..

Man, am I glad I did.

I am so taken with this book! It’s not the plot or the story, which is a hunt for the historical Dracula, it’s the writing style that has me staying up at night, allotting myself only 75 pages a shot so that it lasts a long time. Have any of you ever done this?

It’s clean, evocative, with a purity of language that has me frankly jealous. More importantly I have rarely read a book where the style of the writing so perfectly augments the story. So, without adding spoilers, here’s the deal.

The book is styled around a series of letters written by a variety of historians over the course of hundreds of years and bridged by a simple first person narrative as the protagonist seeks to uncover the mysteries surrounding the possibility that Dracula did and does exist. The protagonist is a motherless teenage girl, writing from the vantage of her middle years, who has been raised as a sort of literary nomad, following her diplomat/historian father around the world, finding various sources (some personal and some academic) that lead her toward discovering whether or not Dracula exists and how his story has impacted her own.

Halfway through the book I realized that even though there must be twenty purported authors represented in these various letters, journals, and notes, the voice of each was pretty much the same. At first I thought this was simply a weakness in the writing but now, when I am very near the end, I’ve decided it is purposeful, powerful and incredibly smart.

Because, you see, all the authors of all these letters have more or less the same sort of background—even though separated by culture, generations, and class. They are all avid (no make that obsessive) historians, academic scholars raised from an early age amongst books, more at home in a library than any other place. In which case it only makes sense that their vocabulary would be similar, their reference points would be the same (and there are NO pop culture reference at all, none, nothing looks like something that hasn’t existed for hundreds of years i.e. you would never find “The sky was the color of acid washed blue jeans.”) Nothing dates the story; thus the story takes on the aura of a fable, which is perfect when taken in the context. I mean, it is a story about Dracula.

So, wow. I’ll be plunking down the big bucks for Ms. Kostova’s next book, too. And happily (which is even more of a miracle!)