Dracula’s Guest & Other Stories
Title: Dracula’s Guest & Other Stories
Author: Bram Stoker
Publication: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (1 May 2006)
Paperback: 224 pages
Rating: 3 out of 5
Bram Stoker might have penned the most recognised novel on vampires – misconstruing the character of the Transylvanian prince of the Order of the Dragon along the way – but he was never a great yarn teller. I cannot tolerate Dracula, his magnum opus, for the melodramatically bad piece of writing that it is. His style, therefore, isn’t his saving grace in these collected stories, however he came up with some interesting if slightly folkloric tales of the supernatural.
The title story, Dracula’s Guest, is thought to be a prequel to Stoker’s most recognised novel about the Transylvanian vampire Count with decidedly odd habits. The atmospheric prose of the story is accentuated by its setting in a cemetery. An unnamed narrator, possibly Jonathan Harker, is in Munich and travels on Walpurgisnacht. He is ‘English and therefore adventurous’, which proves to be something of a drawback by the end of his little experience. If he is the same Jonathan Harker from Dracula, it shows how stupid, stubborn and narrow-minded some characters are. They never learn their lesson!
The Judge’s House is excellent and truly a frightening tale. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and I tell the story to anyone who cares to listen. Most of them get the chills halfway through and one, a student of mine, ended up staring at me wide-eyed in fright. The story is inspired by Le Fanu’s An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street but it is, as mentioned by the editor of this collection, more visceral in evoking fear.
Stoker’s other tales make for some worthy reading as well. Those that I found interesting are The Secret of the Growing Gold, The Coming of Abel Behenna and The Chain of Destiny. Stoker tends to romance it up whenever he can with his stories so the experience of reading supernatural fiction with tinges of courtship add to the factor that he doesn’t come up with many scary stories. In fact, The Judge’s House is the only real thriller in this collection.
As with most collections, there are some good stories which share the pages with bad ones. In this case, Crooken Sands, The Red Stockade and The Dualitists are the culprits, especially the last which I find quite tasteless in its supposed humour.
