By Karen Essex (384 pages)
Published by Doubleday
Bookish rating: 4
Quick, before Halloween comes, read this atmospheric reinvention of Bram Stoker's Dracula! This was such a fun book to read, with all the delicious spookiness of the season. And you know what else? Despite being SO FREAKING OVER vampires, Essex's tale has a fabulous originality about it--a lack of cheap sensationalism or teen angst (our heroine is, after all, a the very proper Mina, a girls' school instructor of impeccable purity and virtue--enter Dracula [bwhahahaha]).
Essex takes Mina from the original Dracula and though she is indeed (initially) portrayed as the ever so proper schoolmistress who seeks only a good husband (Jonathan Harker) and a warm kitchen full of happy children, Essex explores Mina's simmering sexuality and erotic desires, which of course gives her the popular Victorian term "hysterical." The tension between Mina's desire and her belief in propriety is expertly portrayed. Poor, poor Mina.
Dracula himself is very complex and fabulously drawn. Heck, by the end, I sort of wanted a vampire of my own to pursue me across centuries.
Dracula in Love is an absorbing, moody novel that delivers on every level. Totally recommended for some autumn reading in front of a fire, preferably with a glass of something red.
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