I read this book while dog-sitting in a room shaded from the sunny afternoons near the Pacific.
Ah well, surrounded by dogs in bed with me, including my own beloved pooch, who did not hide her jealousy well, I was frequently disrupted from my concentration. I stuck with it, thinking that so many people I've met hear "Hungarian" and immediately think of vampires, of Transylvania, and well, there are actually descendants of Vlad Tepes - Drakyula - Dracula - Vlad the Impaler - who is honored for keeping the Turks out of his Principality - and whose tactics have actually been used in modern times by other bizarre, evil, mentally ill, personalities - alive today. Prince Charles, who is not evil or mentally ill, is one of them and so might you be.
I also thought that some of you might want to do some reading that gives you the creeps and though my copy was rife with high recommendations and this book came out over a decade ago, I decided to persist in reading it so I could yea or ney the critics.
"The Historian" is a very researched, very detailed, very intellectual, very long, book. Throughout the writing creates a tension in the reader that persists as the author, Elizabeth Kostova, drops subtle hints along the way. Some you'll figure out right away, others not. The dramatic parts sneak up on you, kind of like a vampire.
If you like diplomats, grad students, academic travel, university conferences, European travel, libraries, librarians, archives, and books, especially ancient books that mysteriously appear in study alcoves and on office desks bearing a dragon motif that makes one addicted to the pursuit of Vlad... If you find tiny tattoos of the same dragon motif on the shoulders of maidens curious... If you like monasteries and monks, churches and priests, village women who sing folk songs and walk on burning coals without injury, graves under floors, graves guarded by monks, dark stone cellars were the undead persist, cloves of garlic stuffed in pockets, silver bullets and silver daggers, as well as the love stories of innocents, this tome might be one for you.
Something about it, the language, the pacing, the mentalities, feels to be from past centuries. Despite the fact that some of it is played out in the 1950's during the Communist occupation of Hungary and the Balkans, as well as the 1970's, it just doesn't feel like it.
Not once did the sun come out.
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