sylvia pimentalThe Historian
April 21st 2008 04:24
My life is a little bit busy at the moment, cluttered up by things I should have done weeks ago that have piled up, but what that means is that I haven’t had time to read anything new which I can blog about. So for today, at least, I am going to be talking about a book I read awhile ago. Yes, that’s sort of cheating, isn’t it? But at least I’m honest about it.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is one of my favourite books, and at a glance seems to be just the silly sort of book I would be interested in. It’s about vampires, it’s about history (which is one of my main topics of interest), and it’s about the Balkans, too (where half of my family comes from, so it’s interesting to me). But the more I think about it, the less The Historian is like the other books that I read.
You see, I generally characterise myself as a Plot Girl, rather than a Word Girl. I will choose books that sound like they have a really good storyline, one thing happening after another, mysteries, intrigues, battles between good and evil, magic, journeys, exploration, quests; and all of it, often, thrown together in one book (or series) with a plot that moves along swiftly. I generally avoid books that sound like they’re going to be wordy. I don’t mind reading something beautifully written, of course, but if given a choice between a standard fantasy novel about a guy going on a quest, with a wizard, etc., or an exquisitely written novel about a woman coping with an emotional journey of some sort, I know what I will choose. Of course, what I’m doing when I make that choice is judging a book by its cover, or what I think it will contain. There’s nothing to say that a fantasy novel with a great plot, written in a pedestrian manner, won’t utterly fail to engage the reader in that great plot, whereas a well-written book with a small story might actually be much more absorbing.
You don’t really know until you’ve tried reading a book whether you’ll enjoy it or not. Just stating the obvious, here. But whether you are a plot-person or word-person decides what kind of book you’ll even try to read. I’ve been thinking about this, so I know that I am a plot-person, but I’m curious about all YOUR preferences, people out there who I hope are reading my blog. If you know your preference, please comment.
So, back to The Historian. For those who haven’t picked it up yet, it is one of the few books I feel confident enough to really recommend. It is the story of a nameless female historian’s teenage travels and the mysteries surrounding both her parents, which she tries to solve. It is written as a memoir of the historian, at first, but also delves into letters from both her parents, and other characters, so that for much of the novel, her father is actually the protagonist. It is partly a historical novel, of Vlad the Impaler (Dracula), the Ottoman Empire, and communist Eastern Europe, mostly.
It is not like the books that I normally read, because I would actually consider it a wordy book- at least by my own standards. It does have quite a good plot; mysteries aplenty, a lot of travelling, and a few spooky bits, but the whole thing moves at rather a sedate pace for such a long novel. Compared to The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody (which I reviewed previously, and which I guess might be of comparable length), which rocketed along with a million, billion things happening in quick succession, The Historian meanders in places, and takes it’s time to stretch out the fundamental mysteries of the plot. Leading the reader on an exciting adventure is not necessarily the main focus of the plotting. (I apologise to Elizabeth Kostova if she intended it to be, but this is how I read it). The focus is more on the journey, what is experienced along the way, what is learned along the way, and the conclusion of the journey is just the end point.
For a book about Dracula, I actually found it to be a quite pleasant read. I took a long time to get through it, reading a few chapters with a cup of tea, savouring it. (Although, reading it at night, before bed, and then dreaming of undead librarians at your own university library, wasn’t quite as pleasant). The plot, about Dracula, and the several persons who mysteriously disappear throughout the novel, weren’t my main source of enjoyment. I liked reading the words. I love the descriptions of the characters’ travels through the cities of Europe and Turkey, viewing historic sites, eating strawberries while travelling through the French countryside, camping out in the woods of Wallachia. The characters spend quite a lot of time in libraries and archives, in many countries, looking through old books, reading ancient letters and Romanian folktales, and accounts of Vlad Dracula’s torture methods- alright, so it’s not all lovely. But most of these scenes are evocative and interesting because of the way they’re written, quite apart from any relevance they have to the plot.
The plot itself was interesting enough to hold my attention throughout, but I gained the most pleasure from the slowly-paced travels of the various characters through countries and through history, and was not at all anxious, really, to find out what happened next. This is how I wish a lot more novels would be- beautifully written, yet not completely devoid of an interesting and imaginative storyline. Maybe there are more books like that, but I haven’t picked them up and read them, because it doesn’t say “Dracula” in the blurb, and therefore I assume I won’t be interested. But The Historian is a book that I would recommend to anyone who thinks that they might find it interesting.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is one of my favourite books, and at a glance seems to be just the silly sort of book I would be interested in. It’s about vampires, it’s about history (which is one of my main topics of interest), and it’s about the Balkans, too (where half of my family comes from, so it’s interesting to me). But the more I think about it, the less The Historian is like the other books that I read.
You see, I generally characterise myself as a Plot Girl, rather than a Word Girl. I will choose books that sound like they have a really good storyline, one thing happening after another, mysteries, intrigues, battles between good and evil, magic, journeys, exploration, quests; and all of it, often, thrown together in one book (or series) with a plot that moves along swiftly. I generally avoid books that sound like they’re going to be wordy. I don’t mind reading something beautifully written, of course, but if given a choice between a standard fantasy novel about a guy going on a quest, with a wizard, etc., or an exquisitely written novel about a woman coping with an emotional journey of some sort, I know what I will choose. Of course, what I’m doing when I make that choice is judging a book by its cover, or what I think it will contain. There’s nothing to say that a fantasy novel with a great plot, written in a pedestrian manner, won’t utterly fail to engage the reader in that great plot, whereas a well-written book with a small story might actually be much more absorbing.
You don’t really know until you’ve tried reading a book whether you’ll enjoy it or not. Just stating the obvious, here. But whether you are a plot-person or word-person decides what kind of book you’ll even try to read. I’ve been thinking about this, so I know that I am a plot-person, but I’m curious about all YOUR preferences, people out there who I hope are reading my blog. If you know your preference, please comment.
So, back to The Historian. For those who haven’t picked it up yet, it is one of the few books I feel confident enough to really recommend. It is the story of a nameless female historian’s teenage travels and the mysteries surrounding both her parents, which she tries to solve. It is written as a memoir of the historian, at first, but also delves into letters from both her parents, and other characters, so that for much of the novel, her father is actually the protagonist. It is partly a historical novel, of Vlad the Impaler (Dracula), the Ottoman Empire, and communist Eastern Europe, mostly.
It is not like the books that I normally read, because I would actually consider it a wordy book- at least by my own standards. It does have quite a good plot; mysteries aplenty, a lot of travelling, and a few spooky bits, but the whole thing moves at rather a sedate pace for such a long novel. Compared to The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody (which I reviewed previously, and which I guess might be of comparable length), which rocketed along with a million, billion things happening in quick succession, The Historian meanders in places, and takes it’s time to stretch out the fundamental mysteries of the plot. Leading the reader on an exciting adventure is not necessarily the main focus of the plotting. (I apologise to Elizabeth Kostova if she intended it to be, but this is how I read it). The focus is more on the journey, what is experienced along the way, what is learned along the way, and the conclusion of the journey is just the end point.
For a book about Dracula, I actually found it to be a quite pleasant read. I took a long time to get through it, reading a few chapters with a cup of tea, savouring it. (Although, reading it at night, before bed, and then dreaming of undead librarians at your own university library, wasn’t quite as pleasant). The plot, about Dracula, and the several persons who mysteriously disappear throughout the novel, weren’t my main source of enjoyment. I liked reading the words. I love the descriptions of the characters’ travels through the cities of Europe and Turkey, viewing historic sites, eating strawberries while travelling through the French countryside, camping out in the woods of Wallachia. The characters spend quite a lot of time in libraries and archives, in many countries, looking through old books, reading ancient letters and Romanian folktales, and accounts of Vlad Dracula’s torture methods- alright, so it’s not all lovely. But most of these scenes are evocative and interesting because of the way they’re written, quite apart from any relevance they have to the plot.
The plot itself was interesting enough to hold my attention throughout, but I gained the most pleasure from the slowly-paced travels of the various characters through countries and through history, and was not at all anxious, really, to find out what happened next. This is how I wish a lot more novels would be- beautifully written, yet not completely devoid of an interesting and imaginative storyline. Maybe there are more books like that, but I haven’t picked them up and read them, because it doesn’t say “Dracula” in the blurb, and therefore I assume I won’t be interested. But The Historian is a book that I would recommend to anyone who thinks that they might find it interesting.
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