Dracula by Bram Stoker Re-edited by Jan Needle
Walker Books, 2007. ISBN 9781406305814.
(Ages 13+) Recommended. This timeless classic, re-edited by Jan
Needle to make it more accessible to today's young audience, will
thrill
readers just as it did when first published in 1897. Told in diary form
with
newspaper articles and narrative competing for space, the events take
place
over several months in Transylvania and England. Needle has abridged
some of
the diaries and retold the main events in narrative form to move the
story along,
and this with some linking pages makes the whole much easier to read
than the
original.
The diaries of several people overlap, giving
different points of view as to what is happening and building the
tension as
those who are in denial come closer to the truth. Beginning with the
stories of
Jonathon Harker, a clerk sent to Count Dracula's castle in transplants,
the
story develops speed as we realises what a pickle he is in. Jonathon's
fiancee,
the strong willed Mina Murray, also keeps a diary of her account of
what
is
happening to her beloved, and keeps his letters to her while he is
away. Her
best friend, Lucy Westenra, keeps a diary as well, as she falls under
the
thrall of Dracula and needs eventually to be staked. Lucy's suitors
includes Dr
Seward, a diarist who by coincidence runs an asylum next door to
Dracula's
house, and here he has a patient, Renfield, whose behaviour is very
odd. And so
the story is made up from pieces of the diaries of all these
characters, tied
together with narrative pieces.
But it is Van Helsing, the Dutchman, who
first shows them all what they are dealing with after Lucy's death. He
shows
them the woman in her coffin, and convinced they endeavour to kill her
as only
a vampire can be killed: a stake through the heart, removal of the
head, and
the mouth stuffed with garlic.
There are some quite inspiring passages. The
ship coming into harbour at Whitby, carrying the boxes of earth from
Transylvania, and the body of Dracula and his cronies, has lost all of
its
crew, and is steered in by the captain, whose dead body is lashed to
the mast.
The lingering death of Lucy, despite being surrounded by help: the
antics of
Renfield, incarcerated at the lunatic asylum, the workings of primitive
transfusions and so on, all engender a sense of unease and disturbance
to this
fabulous tale.
The superb illustrations add to the
creepiness of the whole (check out Lucy as a vampire on p 218), and it
was a
pleasure to read the cut down original and put all the films, videos
and other
books into some perspective. Recommended for secondary students with a
penchant
for knowing the true story, and an eagerness for horror.
Fran Knight