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Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6 EAN: 9781600242786 Edition: Abridged Format: Abridged, Audiobook ISBN: 1600242782 Label: Hachette Audio Manufacturer: Hachette Audio Number Of Items: 10 Publication Date: June 03, 2008 Publisher: Hachette Audio Studio: Hachette Audio Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also. As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union. Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words. --Regina Marler Product Description: If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian.The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words. --Regina Marler Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Longer than it looks/needs, but otherwise goodIt was a good read. A little longer than it needed to be. One chapter just went on and on like a high school textbook. The book went on forever, then the end seemed to come out of nowhere. I'm glad I read it, but wouldn't recommend it to just any friend. Rating: - Good writing...bad editting.The editor must have been asleep on this one. At least a third of the book could have been removed altogether which would have made it a better read. She describes everything beautifully, it is simply too much. Rating:  - BrilliantI was completely blown away by this novel. I expected it to be good, and couldn't wait to read it, but I never thought it would be this good. So well written, it is a "road-movie" through Europe, Amstersdam, France, Italy, Greece, Istanbul, Sofia and countryside Bulgaria, Budapest in Hungary, Romania, a story so enthralling that you can't leave the book. I sure believe anyone interested in history should read it, and for those who love vampire stories, this is a feast! Rating:  - The HistorianThis is a greatly entertaining book full of mystery and intrigue. Perfect for cuddling up with on a cold day. Rating: - Angieville: THE HISTORIANClocking in at over 700 pages, this doorstopper has no right to be anywhere near as entertaining as it is. But it is so entertaining. Kostova knows how to pace a tale so that her faithful reader never tires or wavers in her interest to see what happens next. I thought for sure I'd bog down somewhere in the middle and have to press on through but I never did. There were points where I stopped to marvel in bewilderment, "How many layers deep is the narrative running now? 4? 5? And yet I can't put it ... Read More |
