Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Genre: Classic Rating: ⭐⭐

I mentioned in my review of Oliver Twist that classics are either a hit or a miss for me, and if Oliver Twist was a hit, Dracula by Bram Stoker was a miss. I was interested in reading the book because I wanted to see where our modern conceptions of vampires came from, and that aspect of the novel was definitely interesting.

That being said, that was just about the only part of the book that I enjoyed. The pace was mind-numbingly slow, and the plot was relatively uneventful. Stoker could have gone in so many interesting directions since he wrote it as an epistolary novel, but instead he had endless pages of droning on about unimportant details.

Similarly, I didn’t enjoy the fact that so many of Dracula’s characteristics and behaviors were not explained. Much of the novel was very ambiguous, to the point of causing boredom.

As a whole, while Dracula wasn’t quite as torturous as The Catcher in the Rye, it certainly didn’t impress me.