The Historian

Elizabeth Kostova's novel, heavily marketed as a more literary version of The Da Vinci Code (plus who can resist the pull of Dracula?), falls flat. The plot is pretty spare, and there is little character development. For example, I don't understand why Kostova uses the retrospective 1st person as her narrative tool.

I already am suspicious of books over 500 pages. This book is nearly 650 pages, and I couldn't get into the book until about page 200! Kostova's "literary thriller" reads more like a plodding travelogue that strains to tie together interesting tidbits about Dracula and vampires in general.

Here is the only quote that stood out for me:

History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is not perfectible, but evil is.

This is Dracula trying to persuade a historian to catalogue his vast library which documents the evil acts of man. I don't think I'm giving too much away because Kostova doesn't really run with this theme. Which is a shame, really, because I never thought of evil - and not goodness - being perfectible.