Life in the Time of COVID-19

The Historian      by Elizabeth Kostova

I have a confession to make.  I have not just read this book, but I want to share it with you anyway because: 1) I found it fascinating and 2) I am reading this author's second book and will be sharing my thoughts about that book this week. I found this book while browsing in a bookstore, one of my favorite past times.  Sadly bookstores are rapidly becoming extinct.  I still mourn the demise of the Borders bookstore.  And while I love when a book shows up at my door step a few days after ordering it online it is just not the same as wandering through the shelves of a bookstore and finding a good book.  That is how I found The Historian.  It was lying on a table with a very unassuming cover (not the one you see in this blog) and name and yet I picked it up and bought it.  I still question why I picked the book up but I am so glad I did.

This book centers around a woman who while looking around her father’s library finds an ancient book and letters.  The letters lead this woman who has led a relatively sheltered life in academia on a quest of discovery, who is  Vlad the impaler and is there any connection to Dracula.  Interestingly the first letter opens with almost an apology for finding it because the author, her father knows that a historian that reads the letters will be compelled to follow the path he was on, one that led him into Ivy league libraries, monasteries and all over Eastern Europe.  One that he says drove those before him nearly to insanity and left him nearly ruined.

So the question is Did Dracula truly exists and did he “live” from century to century.  The main character is determined to pick up where her father left off and so the reader is guided through history to a haunting tale that is both fascinating and at times somewhat scary.  I found that if I were alone in the house by myself at night I often could not read the book.  But that is just me, I scare easily. 

I love the way this author writes.  She is not your everyday let’s throw some words on a page writer.  Rather than breezing through the book, I found myself savoring the words.  The words conveyed me into the world I was reading about and while as I mentioned before, the book scared me, I could not stop reading it.  Just not at night!  Read it! It is worth it!