The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova | Mystery & Thrillers | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0751537284 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0751537284 Global Overview for this book
Registered by LeishaCamden of Alna bydel, Oslo fylke Norway on 7/27/2007
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
I've heard many many wonderful things about this book, and as I am also something of a vampire buff I suppose I really should get round to reading this book soon. Ish. :-) I hope it's as good as everybody says ... !!!
The blurb:
(coming soon)
I bought this book for £3 in a CD/DVD/bookstore in Glasgow in November 2006.
The blurb:
(coming soon)
I bought this book for £3 in a CD/DVD/bookstore in Glasgow in November 2006.
Review copied from amazon.co.uk.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Some stories can be told again in endlessly different ways. Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian combines a search for the historical Dracula with a profound sense that Stoker got some things right--that the late Mediaeval tyrant kills among us yet, undead and dangerous. From Stoker, she also takes a sense that the supernatural seems more real when embedded in documentary evidence.
Three generations search for Dracula's resting place, and their stories are nested within each other, so that we know that at least two quests ended badly. Kostova rations her thrills very carefully so that we jump out of our chair at quite slight surprises, especially when we have come to expect buckets of blood and loud bangs. She also has a profound and well-communicated sense of place and period, so that the book is equally at home in 1930s Rumania, Cold War Budapest and 1970s Oxford. Kostova is particularly good on the sights and sounds of remote country places and the taste of real peasant food--this sensuous realism does not always go with her other skill, the creation of imagined documents and folksongs that feel as real and true as what might be actual.
This is a quietly good book rather than a spectacular debut, with some uncomfortable twists in its tail; her heroine-narrators are, and perhaps remain, in the most serious of jeopardies. ---Roz Kaveney
OBSERVER
'A vastly ingenious plot . . . Kostova is a whiz at storytelling and narrative pace'
Amazon.co.uk Review
Some stories can be told again in endlessly different ways. Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian combines a search for the historical Dracula with a profound sense that Stoker got some things right--that the late Mediaeval tyrant kills among us yet, undead and dangerous. From Stoker, she also takes a sense that the supernatural seems more real when embedded in documentary evidence.
Three generations search for Dracula's resting place, and their stories are nested within each other, so that we know that at least two quests ended badly. Kostova rations her thrills very carefully so that we jump out of our chair at quite slight surprises, especially when we have come to expect buckets of blood and loud bangs. She also has a profound and well-communicated sense of place and period, so that the book is equally at home in 1930s Rumania, Cold War Budapest and 1970s Oxford. Kostova is particularly good on the sights and sounds of remote country places and the taste of real peasant food--this sensuous realism does not always go with her other skill, the creation of imagined documents and folksongs that feel as real and true as what might be actual.
This is a quietly good book rather than a spectacular debut, with some uncomfortable twists in its tail; her heroine-narrators are, and perhaps remain, in the most serious of jeopardies. ---Roz Kaveney
OBSERVER
'A vastly ingenious plot . . . Kostova is a whiz at storytelling and narrative pace'
Boka er lest. Noen tanker kommer her.
Journal Entry 4 by LeishaCamden at Historisk museum in Oslo Sentrum, Oslo fylke Norway on Saturday, March 30, 2019
Released 5 yrs ago (3/30/2019 UTC) at Historisk museum in Oslo Sentrum, Oslo fylke Norway
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Releasing the book today, happy travels :-)