It's amazing how quickly you can read a book when it's totally gripping, you don't have any prior engagements for the weekend, and you then have to spend Monday lying flat on your back because your back seizes up for no apparent reason...
Dracula is one of those novels which has contributed so much to subsequent literature, film and general popular culture that it's definitely worth reading in order to understand all of those references.
It is also a cracking read.
The story is told through the diaries and letters of the main characters - a style which took me a chapter or so to get into, but once I got used to it, the narrative device is used really well & smoothly to create dramatic tension and move the story along.
Although I was obviously already familiar with the general outline of the story I didn't really know any of the detail, and so came to it fresh. It's really refreshing to read a novel of that period that is so geographically mobile, beyond the European Grand Tour - Van Helsing appears to travel to and from Amsterdam in a day or so, and the trip to Transylvania is undertaken with the minimum of planning and trepidation (other than the natural fear of hunting Count Dracula down in his homeland!)
**pauses for brief hiatus in blogging whilst lying on back as cat decides to stand on my chest between me and the keyboard**
It is easy to see how this earned its classic status - the mix of tension, horror, strong characters, and exactly the right level of description to create atmosphere and location without dragging the description out. Definitely worth a read, if only to understand the contribution it has made to so many other works. Interestingly, I can't help but suspect that JK Rowling got the idea for Voldemort & Harry's mental connection from the link between Dracula and Mina...just one of the many contributions!
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