I also enjoyed the characters, specifically Dr. Van Helsing, who is a strong and charismatic character. Van Helsing really captures the imagination with his intelligence and eccentricities; he’s kind of a Sherlock Holmes character who knows all and makes everyone else look a tad dim.
One invariably refers to the various films when reading this novel. In particular, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation starring Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins. It’s a film I have enjoyed numerous times, but it is merely a rough (very rough) approximation of the book. Almost nothing in the film is as it appears in the book. Coppola made his own version of the novel. He titled it Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is not. It’s Francis Ford Coppola’s. Filmmakers seem unable or unwilling to do books (or history) justice.
One flaw of the book is Bram Stoker’s tiresome fondness for creating dialogue with characters who speak a particular dialect. Even Van Helsing’s English is not 100 percent, and verbs remain in the present tense, and articles get used inconsistently. This ends up being a distraction.
But the rest of the novel is nothing short of wonderful. It really pulls you in and keeps you there. And I know I rattle on endlessly about atmosphere, but the world you enter in Dracula is everything you could hope for: it’s eerie, it’s mysterious, it’s macabre; you can see the fog, the mist, the shadows; you can hear the wolves. I chose autumn as a good time to read it—not because of Halloween—and wouldn’t you know, much of the novel indeed takes place in September and October.
If you enjoy reading and like fiction, I would consider Dracula. It is 400 pages of enjoyment.
https://www.amazon.com/Dracula-Bram-Stoker/dp/0141196882
