One of the earliest books that I picked up when I was getting back into reading was Dracula by Bram Stoker. Everyone has heard the name, but I’m not sure how many people had read the original source material. And it was October, so perfect time for it, really.

Published in 1897, Dracula is an epistolary novel that is told through diary entries and letter exchanges between an ensemble cast that must come together to figure out a way to put an end to the most famous vampire in literature history, Count Dracula.

I enjoyed this story and found it quite fun to get back into the nitty and gritty of what a vampire used to be – a creature so unnatural and unholy that it feasts on humans and strikes fear into the population. A figure of real villainy who has no redeemable features, and that seemingly cannot be killed by any obvious means, would be truly horrifying to behold in reality and would also no doubt incite a feeling of complete helplessness if someone were ever to be so unlucky enough as to actually come in to contact with them.

Knowing this, there was a hanging eeriness about the story that was supported by Stoker’s way of describing what was happening; the details were so in depth and thought out that it made imagining the characters and the scenarios all the more vivid and realistic. The atmosphere created was one undoubtedly gothic and supernatural in nature, and yet it also managed to convey a keenness for the developing sciences and medical prowess of the time.

Though I also have to say that I personally found this book to be quite the demanding read in places, and there were a few passages that I had to revisit more than once to make sure that I fully comprehended the sheer volume of information that was being covered. There were often very long sentences that had very little punctuation, which meant that there were no available points in the paragraph to ‘pause for breath’ and take the time to process what I had just read.

There was a fair bit of repetition of events at play as well, which meant that I would regularly have a sense of Deja Vu as the story progressed. A lot of this had to do with the fact that the events in the book were shared, and so eventually the same things were all happening to different characters, who would then all make a note about what they had experienced in their own journal entries, or in letters sent to their contemporaries. Sometimes I felt that a point was dragged out maybe a little too long, which would then result in a slowing of the pace of the story, which would then mean that it took longer in general to advance in the narrative and find out what was happening.

Ultimately, however, I enjoyed the challenge that Dracula presented and I felt achieved when I finished the story. The characters I found to be pleasant and I was rooting for their success throughout. And, even though some of the medical science mentioned in the book would not fly today, I appreciated that it was a time of historical scientific and conscious growth by some very smart and very curious people. It actually felt quite amazing to be reading about the earliest knowledge of new sciences, such as blood transfusions, and read about how they were thought to work, especially when compared and considered against how commonplace those practices are today.

I’m glad I read this book and it has definitely encouraged me to pick up some more of the ‘classics’ in the future.