Cannonball #12: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
by Caroline
The best place to start with Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian is this: It is the twelfth book in my Cannonball roster, but takes up more than a sixth of the total pages so far. It is a LONG book and the prose is dense. It is also a lush, loving book involving more research than I can begin to fathom: Even if Kostova made up the entire thing, to place it in history and make it credible requires a lot of thought and digging.
The result is cerebral but passionate. I turned the pages as quickly as possible, both because the plot was compelling and because the writing had polish and verve. Kostova mimics Bram Stoker’s Dracula in style, and her book is set just long enough ago, among a crowd of just-removed-enough academics, that the innocent, distant tone of classic Gothic narrators suits it. Primary narrator Paul is a sort of nonprofit diplomat, traveling all over Europe and allowing his sixteen-year-old daughter to tag along. He reveals a story in bits and pieces and built with the help of letters and journals.
The presence of these and of “primary sources” give Kostova’s story a great postmodern edge, and as I read I felt like I was watching over the main characters’ shoulders as they explored. It helped that Kostova is a gifted suspensist, because this book scared the hockey sticks out of me a LOT, moreso than anything I’ve read since my Stephen King heyday. In a way, the scariest part of the book is how convincing Kostova is when describing a group of intellectuals descending into a supernatural epic. These are really educated, skeptical people and for some reason they are handpicked as victims of a villain who’s incredible in every sense.
It is rare to be surprised and pleased by the creativity of a vampire book, or any supernatural-evil book, or any epistolary (framed by fictional letters) book, or, let’s face it, any book. The mystery and horror genres in particular suffer tropes lightly, but this is the most interesting horror I’ve read since House of Leaves blew the genre apart with its own brand of postmodern braindrain.
I loved this book, if you couldn’t tell already. My love of horror writing runs deep and old, and it’s clear Kostova’s done her research in the nonfiction and fiction areas of vampire lore. If vampires don’t interest you, turn back. If history doesn’t interest you, double turn back. Most of all, if you’re expecting some underdeveloped Freudian back-room sex metaphor like Twilight, I can certainly show you a new moon of your own.
Cannonball logo font: Sketch Rockwell. For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.
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