book review dracula

By Bram Stoker

"Dracula"'s greatness is unquestionable. We look at some of the reasons why the book is so great.

Article written by Israel Njoku

Degree in M.C.M with focus on Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ was not the first novel on Vampires, nor the most particularly well-written one. What it has over every other vampire book before and after it was supreme staying power and influence. Scholars have theorized that this staying power owes in large measure to Stoker’s ability to capture a range of Victorian fears that are still relatable to us to this day in the work.

A Thrilling Tale

Bram Stoker is a master of the horror genre and excels at creating suspense and maintaining thrill. The narrative technique of making use of diaries, journals, news reports, and other methods of information storage and sharing lends a realistic and believable air to the story. We are not hearing all this fantastic tale from the unreliable narration of just one character, but a piecing together of a coherent narrative from several characters . We never get the perspective of Dracula himself, and we are often in the dark about his motives and actions.

This lends a degree of mysteriousness that tempers our optimism about the possible success of the crew of light. The fact that the crew members were often racing against the clock— such as Harker being desperate to escape before the day he was to be killed, and the crew hurrying to destroy the temporarily incapacitated Dracula before sunset when he would become more powerful, provides the novel with the relevant tension and urgency to hold readers spellbound.

Stoker’s characterization in ‘Dracula’ is most fitting. Jonathan Harker’s naivete, Lucy’s innocence, and Dr. John Seward’s total faith in Science at the expense of the spiritual are factors that incapacitate the protagonist’s effort against Dracula’s menace. Dr. Van Helsing’s vast knowledge of both modern science and spirituality is the only saving grace for the crew. At this point, it is clear that the characters are being used by Stoker to represent his anxiety over the increasing primacy of science over religion, which is one of the major themes in ‘ Dracula .’

Count Dracula works as a perfect villain because of his immense power, but his limitations are incapacitating enough that his destruction does not seem unrealistic. Dracula’s seeming invincibility at the early stages of the novel was only a result of the knowledge handicap the protagonists had. When they were able to learn all they could about the Vampire, it becomes a much even matchup. This is better than some other villains who display no obvious physical weakness and are only conveniently killed because of some uncharacteristic behaviors on their part. Here the only thing we can fault Dracula with is his inability to operate stealthily without detection, that is, to hide his vampirism totally from society so no one would know who he is.

The characters undergo little change throughout the movie, and in some respects, they appear like cardboard cuts and repetitions. The protagonists are all imbued with similar characteristics; strength, bravery, sharpness of mind, noble constitutions, innocence, and the likes. Mina and Lucy are basically the same characters in a lot of ways— both innocent and, to differing extents, naive. It is only vampirism that brings about any sort of change in the characters. Harker’s gentlemanliness gives way to the expression of pure lust and passion as the female vampires assailed him inside Dracula’s castle, while Lucy becomes a seductress upon her transformation into a Vampire.

A Book that Speaks for an Age

Stoker’s ‘Dracula ‘ has such incredible staying power partly because of the manner in which it captures the anxieties of the age and how such anxieties continue to speak for humans even to this day. ‘Dracula ‘ is a cautionary tale about the threats of sexual corruption in Victorian society. Harker’s uncharacteristic lust and Lucy’s sexual expressions upon being a vampire seem to highlight the unnaturalness of sexual expression. Prudishness is captured as normal, while sexual expression is abnormal.

‘Dracula’ also covers Victorian anxieties over the ascendancy of technology over religion, the threats of invasion from Eastern Europe, and the racist fears over contamination of the British gene pool by strange and inferior groups around the fringes of the British empire, among others. These anxieties are relatable to us, too, given the influence of conservative Christianity in our present day.

The story of ‘ Dracula ‘ ends on a remarkable note . The whole of England is oblivious to the crew of Light’s struggle with Dracula. The protagonist is not greeted with a hero’s welcome as the savior of Britain from a horrible monster. They realize that the only evidence for their story lay in what they have put down, and they admit the possibility of not being believed. This is a break from the convention of having the protagonists of stories being duly acknowledged and appreciated by a grateful society. Only the protagonists know what they have done, and this adds a powerful and moving element to the story.

Dracula Review

Book Title: Dracula

Book Description: 'Dracula' combines Gothic Horror with a vampire's tale of invasion and the brave fight against him, set against a backdrop of Victorian anxieties.

Book Author: Bram Stoker

Book Edition: First Edition

Book Format: Paperback

Publisher - Organization: Signet Classics

Date published: May 30, 1983

Illustrator: Frank Belknap Long

ISBN: 978-0-451-51066-4

Number Of Pages: 384

Adherence to the Zeitgeist

Dracula Review: A Book For The Ages

Dracula is a classic of the Gothic Horror genre, particularly the type with scary monsters. It follows a centuries-old vampire’s attempts to invade England and the efforts of a group of courageous individuals to stop him against all odds. The book captures latent Victorian anxieties and norms of the age while providing a frantic and highly tensed plot that has been reprised over and over again in various film adaptations.

A well written horror book
Has gigantic influence over vampire literature and film
Captures perfectly the anxieties of its time
created memorable characters like Count Dracula and Abraham Van Helsing
Stiff characters that do not develop much
Locks women in constricting gender roles and denies their sexuality
Not that great stylistically

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About Israel Njoku

Israel loves to delve into rigorous analysis of themes with broader implications. As a passionate book lover and reviewer, Israel aims to contribute meaningful insights into broader discussions.

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Bram stoker's dracula, common sense media reviewers.

Classic vampire tale is sexier and darker than you remember.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

An excellent glimpse back into the turn of the cen

At the core of this story is a group of individual

Mina is a strong female character. She is practica

Staking, throat slashing, biting and blood drinkin

This classic is much sexier than you remember. Sex

Male characters drink and smoke in passing as was

Educational Value

An excellent glimpse back into the turn of the century. Plus many of the newfangled inventions of the late 19th/early 20th century play a major role in the story. Trains, typewriters, and steam ships are mentioned often.

Positive Messages

At the core of this story is a group of individuals working together to defeat a literal monster in their midst.

Positive Role Models

Mina is a strong female character. She is practical, courageous, and selfless in the face of increasing peril. She is resourceful and plays a key role in defeating Dracula. Lucy is foolish, free with her affections, and selfish, but she is punished for it. Jonathon is curious, protective, and brave. He shows a strong will to escape his captor and protect Mina.

Violence & Scariness

Staking, throat slashing, biting and blood drinking. These scenes are not described with gruesome detail, but there is definitely more colorful descriptions than you'd expect from a late Victorian novel.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

This classic is much sexier than you remember. Sexually aggressive female vampires dance seductively for Jonathon Harker who expresses "a wicked, burning desire" for them to kiss him. There's a suggestive, promiscuous female predator (Lucy), and an unsettling scene involving the heroine (Mina) forced to drink from Dracula's breast.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Male characters drink and smoke in passing as was the custom for the time period. Plus some unsettling descriptions of the "medicines" used by Dr. Seward.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the vampire novel that started it all is sexier, more violent, and edgier than you probably remember. In one scene, sexually aggressive female vampires dance seductively for Jonathon Harker who expresses "a wicked, burning desire" for them to kiss him; in another the heroine is forced to drink from Dracula's breast. While not described in gruesome detail, there's plenty of staking, throat slashing, biting, and blood drinking. Count Dracula is not the tortured romantic hero of modern-day cinema, but rather an evil monster that must be destroyed. Also, parents should be aware that this novel has a strong female character turned into a sexually aggressive predator, as well as unsettling descriptions of mental illness.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

Parents say (4)
Kids say (14)

Based on 4 parent reviews

I read Dracula when I was 8 years old. ;-)

Classis horror story build great suspense, what's the story.

When Jonthan Harker is sent to Transylvania to conduct some business for an enigmatic nobleman, he's warned by the villagers that Count Dracula has evil powers and diabolical ambitions. When Jonathon attempts to leave he discovers that the villagers are right; He is held captive by the count and barely escapes, badly injured. Meanwhile back in England, his beautiful wife-to-be, Mina, joins her friend Lucy in Whitby to wait for Jonathon to return. Lucy falls ill and begins acting very strangely and it becomes apparent that Lucy's illness is related to the evil count. With the help of two of Lucy's suitors, a brilliant old professor, and a new-found incentive to protect Mina, Jonathon sets off back to Transylvania to destroy the monster.

Is It Any Good?

DRACULA has all the necessary requirements to keep it read by each generation of horror fans. As well as being an excellent time capsule to turn-of-the-century England, it's a scary, intriguing under-the-covers read. With great horror staples like spooky howling wolves, damsels in distress, evil monsters, and a quest to destroy them it's not surprising that this is the novel that kicked off the vampire craze. While the myths about vampires may be familiar, don't be too shocked when this vampire is more monster and ghoul than romantic hero.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the vampire myth. How are the vampires in the Twilight series different? Which vampire lore do you prefer?

Why, when Count Dracula is such a cruel creature in this novel, has he become such an iconic character?

How does the novel itself live up to the hype of all the movies? Were you disappointed to find that Dracula isn't the romantic hero he is on screen?

Book Details

Author : Bram Stoker
Genre : Horror
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : Penguin Group
Publication date : December 31, 1969
Publisher's recommended age(s) : 12 - 15
Number of pages : 560
Last updated : July 12, 2017

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An 1897 Review of Bram Stoker's Dracula

Upon the iconic horror novel's publication 120 years ago, the manchester guardian wrote that it had been "an artistic mistake to fill the whole volume with horrors".

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“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”

“A writer who attempts in the nineteenth century to rehabilitate the ancient legends of the were-wolf and the vampire has set himself a formidable task. Most of the delightful old superstitions of the past have an unhappy way of appearing limp and sickly in the glare of a later day, and in such a story as Dracula , by Bram Stoker, the reader must reluctantly acknowledge that the region of horrors has shifted its ground. Man is no longer in dread of the monstrous and the unnatural, and although Mr. Stoker has tackled his gruesome subject with enthusiasm, the effect is more often grotesque than terrible.

“The Transylvanian site of Castle Dracula is skillfully chosen, and the picturesque region is well described. Count Dracula himself has been in his day a medieval noble, who, by reason of his ‘Vampire’ quilters, is unable to die properly, but from century to century resuscitates his life of the ‘Un-Dead,’ as the author terms it, by nightly droughts of blood from the throats of living victims, with the appalling consequence that those once so bitten must become vampire in their turn.

“The plot is too complicated for reproduction, but it says no little for the authors powers that in spite of its absurdities the reader can follow the story with interest to the end. It is, however, an artistic mistake to fill the whole volume with horrors. A touch of the mysterious, the terrible, or the supernatural is infinitely more effective and credible.”

– The Manchester Guardian , June 15, 1897

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Book Review: Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'

Our book reviewer Scott Southard gives his take on the classic horror novel "Dracula."

“Welcome to my house! Come freely. Go safely. And leave something of the happiness you bring!”

With those words, Count Dracula has been welcoming readers into his castle in Transylvania for over 100 years now. Dracula was not the first vampire in literature, but he is easily the most important. The count has flown like a bat out of Bram Stoker’s classic novel and into our cultural imagination. The vampires of today’s fantasy fiction all owe something to the dark count. Yet, when contemporary readers turn to Stoker’s original novel, they might be surprised because, pardon the pun, it is easy for reviewers to take a bite out of this imperfect horror.

The Dracula in Bram Stoker’s book is not the vampire you might expect. Movies and other pop culture interpretations usually miss the mark when it comes to the novel’s central character. Even the 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula is not really Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The original Dracula is not a romantic hero. He’s a monster, driven by his hunger for blood and his uncontrolled lust to take what he wants.

There are three things that will surprise contemporary readers when they pick up this classic novel. The first is how little horror there really is in the book. It may seem strange to say it, but the body count is surprising low. There’s only a few moments of real white-knuckle terror scenes. My favorite one is the sea journey Dracula takes to London. During the trip he takes out members of the crew one by one, and you can feel the desperation and fear grow with each new entry in the ship’s logs.

It’s also surprising how little we see of the vampire. While the book is called "Dracula," the infamous count only makes a few appearances in its pages. Yes, he is the focus of all of the main characters’ discussions. But beyond some conversations with his English broker Jonathon Harker in the beginning of the book, he is nothing more than a dark and haunting shadow lurking in the background. He is the mystery to be solved, and then becomes the focus of the heroes’ hunt for justice.

The third, and the most surprising for me during this recent reading is how religious the novel is. The friends of Dracula’s first victim spend the book seeking revenge for their deceased friend. Each member of the team views their work as something spiritual, part of a great battle between good and evil. Honestly, it can get a little heavy handed.

If you have the ability to turn off everything you know about the count and just experience the book as Stoker intended, it’s actually a good story with some interesting high points. For example, the narrative is told through a series of diaries, journals and letters. This gives us an interesting first hand insight into all of the characters as they discover and experience the horror of Count Dracula’s actions. While we go in knowing exactly who Dracula is, the characters have to be convinced of the monster. We expect the fangs, they don’t.

"Dracula" by Bram Stoker might not be the book you believe it to be. And like Harker standing at the doorway of the castle in the beginning, you have to decide for yourself if you wish to enter or not. Go on. It’s Halloween. What do you have to lose?

Scott Southard is the author of the new novel "Permanent Spring Showers" and "A Jane Austen Daydream." You can follow his writing via his blog "The Musings and Artful Blunders of Scott D. Southard" at sdsouthard.com .

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Dracula by Bram Stoker - review

Dracula isn't a book, not anymore. Dracula is a name, a broad stereotyping of a character which encompasses many different components and interpretations of our favourite Count. Having been a fan of the concept of vampires for some time, earlier this year I was intrigued to return to the beginning of the vampire genre when I first picked up this book.

The novel is a fascinating entity, not least because of the differences from the modern perception of it. For example, there is the fact that the Count himself isn't hurt by sunlight, a concept which was only introduced in the silent film Nosferatu many years later. This fact is indicative of a problem which arises for any modern reader of Stoker's novel, namely, we're modern and so have a lot of pop culture baggage to contend with whenever we try to get drawn into the novel.

Events which would act as gigantic plot twists to the readers of Stoker's era are easily predictable which does diminish from the impact somewhat. However it does lend the whole story a level of dramatic irony which, in a way, adds to the chilling and almost Cassandrian feeling of ignored prophecies and a predetermined fate. What was in the original story a mere subplot with the ignored warnings of the locals dooming Jonathan Harker to his fate becomes, via the fact that we all know the story, a major theme which colours every scene in the book.

The book also features many details and plot points unfamiliar to someone who knows Dracula only from their general pop culture sensitivity, allowing the reader to have the best of both worlds, granting the eerie inevitability of Jonathan Harker's approach to the castle an extra layer of dread while keeping certain plot twists surprises. Or at least, that was my experience upon reading it.

However, to move away from my arguments for why you should read Dracula despite almost certainly already knowing the ending (SPOILER: Dracula loses) and into the actual story, let me give you a quick overview of the beginning of the book.

It begins with Jonathan Harker's journey through Transylvania to Dracula's castle, after being warned by many locals that Dracula is not someone you want to visit after dark. It is in this section that everything I was talking about above really comes into play.

The dramatic build up to the meeting with Dracula is very tense and scary, perhaps more so with the audience already knowing that Jonathan's apparently amiable host is anything but. The entire first part of the book is an exercise in dread, with Jonathan slowly realising that his host is something inhuman and utterly evil. It is brimming with paranoia and a feeling of the unknowable. It's told entirely via diary entries which only adds to that, enabling us to look into Jonathan's slowly cracking psyche as he begins to make connections and associations between the Count and the horrors of the night. The reader becomes part of the story, experiencing that fear and paranoia via the fact that Jonathan's journal is written for himself, placing us in his shoes.

Not a huge amount happens in this first section of the story but it very much feels like things are happening. One common complaint of older books is the fact that they tend not to be as gripping as modern books. That is not a problem with Dracula, the warnings of things in the night begin only a few pages in and the story grabs you and won't let go, making your fear for Jonathan's safety increase with every sentence.

After this beginning section, which takes about sixty pages, giving it enough time to breath, we cut back to Whitby in England and a correspondence between Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray, our two female heroes. It's here that the book begins to flag a bit and the long, if beautiful, passages dealing with everyday Victorian life begin. This section is told entirely in letters meaning that we now get two different perspectives, ridding us of the tense, clammy paranoia of Jonathan's journal. It leaves the reader desperately thinking on Jonathan's fate as we watch his fiancée and her friend discuss the weather. With the love triangle which surrounds Lucy it begins to feel like a romance novel. Then a ship crashes and the story starts in earnest.

I shall not go any further in outlining the plot, most of you probably know the basics of the rest and there are still some things I would wish to leave as surprises for those of you who are not aware of the finer plot details of the novel. I chose this section specifically as it is representative of the story as a whole, it cuts from tense paranoid first person journal sections to lighter sections of conversation via letters or multiple journal entries. The fact that the book is told entirely via these documents adds to a 'found footage' feel with us being privy to the thoughts of many characters and allowed a look at how their minds work. It gives the whole story a sense of foreboding as you wonder how all the papers were collected together, something which is also exploited by many modern horror films (cough, Blair Witch Project, cough).

On a side note, it is curious how many gothic stories use this framing device. Frankenstein begins with letters and James Hogg's Confessions of A Justified Sinner is told in a rather meta-fictional way via another such device, but that is beside the point. Dracula's device of letters really enables you to understand and sympathise with the characters and see their true thoughts as they try to defeat Dracula. The book plays with this format telling the story in telegrams and diary entries printed in newspapers which are then cut out as newspaper clippings as well as straight journal entries.

The main characters are all very well portrayed, each with a separate personality, quirks and role to play in the story. The story itself is heartbreaking, full of the emotion of the characters as they deal with life, death and love, this is beautifully realised. Dracula touches on many themes, savagery, love, religion, technology and xenophobia to name just a few. It leaves you thinking upon it for a long time afterwards and is required reading for any fan of horror or vampires. Dracula is to vampire novels as A Study in Scarlet is to detective novels: one of the first, greatest and the story which introduced the character for those genres. Dracula is THE vampire and the novel is THE vampire novel.

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Dracula by Bram Stoker: Book Review

I have somehow never seen “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” or any of the other movie incarnations of this book. In fact, I was surprised to read the back cover of this book and find out that the book is about Dracula moving to Enland to set up shop. So, I had no expectations going into it.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It’s written in a journal/letter style, which I (mostly) liked and found interesting. I liked seeing what was going on with the main characters as we went along. The voices of the narrators kind of all blended together though. Mina was different, but Jonathan and Dr. Seward were pretty interchangeable for me. If there wasn’t a clue in the content, I very often had to flip back to see which one was supposed to be writing this section. And I thought Van Helsing’s “accent” was terrible! This intelligent physician/lawyer makes some horrible grammar and syntax mistakes that didn’t come across as real to me. Granted, I’m not an expert at that kind of thing, but there’s my opinon.

Speaking of characters–the characters in this book were all (with the obvious exception of the vampires) too noble and good for words. A typical, paraphrased conversation between characters (I think spoiler free):

“If I should show signs of becoming a vampire, give me your oath that you will do the honorable thing and destroy me in the appropriate way.”

“I would lay down my very life to prevent such a thing from happening, but if it should, I would gladly fulfill such a duty to you, in order that you might go to your eternal reward in Heaven.”

Is this for real? Okay, the book’s over a hundred years old, but still…

Now for my big pet peeve: the way Mina is treated like both this wilting flower and this oddity because she has a “brain like a man’s.” If that’s not a direct quote, it’s close. I tried to keep in mind that this book was written 20 years before women could even vote, but it was still driving me crazy! But then I really thought about it and decided that Stoker might actually have been a little feminist for the times. Mina might be a fragile flower, but at least she is intelligent and she gets to tag along with the men, and they even arm her at one point. I don’t know. But it did bother me.

I was shocked to find out that Van Helsing is an old man who has more in common with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot than Hugh Jackman! So I’m reading along, pleasantly picturing Hugh Jackman every time Van Helsing’s name is mentioned, and then I come across a reference to how he’s an old man. What?!? Where’d Hugh go? Bring him back please!

I’ve made it sound like the book is terrible, but somehow it’s more fun to write about the things that don’t work than it is to write about the things that do. I really did enjoy it and I’m glad I finally read it. I’ve read quite a bit of vampire fiction, so I’m glad to have finally read the book that sort of started it all. It’s all gothic and melodramatic, but if you can live with that, you’ll enjoy the book.

Reviewed October 20, 2008

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Great review! I agree that Stoker was quite the feminist supporter — I imagine his characterization of Mina was the one way that he could put her in the book and place her in an appealing way for the times, versus thoroughly shocking and possibly offending the public.

I absolutely loved this book — you should read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova too, it's quite a story!

I won the book recently and I've been meaning to read this for Halloween. thanks for remind me about the book!

I love your review! I agree, the characters are too noble and good for my taste. It's human to be a little flawed, after all. I saw Copolla's Dracula before reading the book, so I was prepared for an old Van Helsing, instead of the dashing Hugh Jackman.:)

Nice review Jen, I had this one to read this weekend but I think I am going to go with my all time favourite movie – Silence of the Lambs.

I'm not really a vampire girl, love the movies but to read it, hmmmm, but I do want to read this classic.

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Dracula by Bram Stoker

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client and his castle. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master'. In the ensuing battle of wits between the sinister Count Dracula and a determined group of adversaries, Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre.

Dracula has been attributed to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. Structurally it is an epistolary novel, that is, told as a series of diary entries and letters. Literary critics have examined many themes in the novel, such as the role of women in Victorian culture, conventional and conservative sexuality, immigration, colonialism, postcolonialism and folklore. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical and film interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

10/10 Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre.

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Review by Floresiensis

12 positive reader review(s) for Dracula

Bram Stoker biography

Malar Maran from India

Dracula was one of the greatest horror novel ever written.

Oliver from England

iI read this book as a child and it was amazing, I am now reading it again and it is still brilliant.

Gadha Biju from India

Dracula is the first and only book that I had even read in my life. Bram Stoker had written in a way that the reader becomes anxious to read, to know what happens next. Dracula is a milestone in the sphere of literature world.

Tiffany from United States

This book is a true literary work, with stunning use of language to portray the fascinating romanticism of this gothic horror novel. To me this book was more about philosophical meanings of life and death, and the meaning of true friendship, loyalty, and love. Although sprinkled with several graphic horror scenes, this book was not written as some attempt solely to scare people in some shallow way. It has so much depth to it, and I found myself admiring Mina, a main character, for her courage and faith throughout the novel. Beautifully crafted, this novel pieces together diaries and letters in a way that keeps the reader engaged. The relationships these characters build with one another is very special. I felt I went in a time machine back to a place where people truly cared for one another and built intimate relationships based on true trust and friendships. I recommend this book for mature Christians, since a common theme seemed to be relying on God for strength and hope throughout the story.

Johnny English from Bahrain

I liked the book and the movie too. It is neither scary nor boring. And I am fond of horror books.

Jakob from Germany

Dracula by Bram Stoker is a wonderful book full of exciting action, suspense and horror. A great book for all generations, not too scary and not too boring. And the thrill leaves you lying on the edge of the seat.

Devasis from India

Read this book again. Horror yes but the Victorian nod to women’s nobility and suffering robs the pace of this yarn. How did Jonathan Harker escape from the castle not known! Again East Europeans are a tad less civilized than the British. A yarn but very very slow in unfolding.

Chris from Bangladesh

It is good because it builds up tension.

Lily from London

The book is very enjoyable and builds a lot of tension it is not predictable like other books.

Zeynep from Turkey

A satisfying read for the ones who have an appetite for horror and fantasy in a classical way. Basically it’s Victorian Era merging with peculiarity and wickedness.

Ishmael from USA

This was one of the first books I remember reading that used the epistolary type of writing. Bram Stoker managed to convey the story so eloquently and with tension using the ships logs, letters and diaries and newspaper articles. It has,of course become a classic and although others have written about vampires there is good reason why this is the book the popularized it.

Gunish from India

The perfect blend of horror and adventure is seen in this fantastic book. Kept it simple which you will not find in the classics and I'm sure Bram Stoker was happy about it. The readers felt it more comfortable than other classics as it comes straight to the point and doesn't beat around the bush. Even though Mary Shelly enjoyed 69 years of success after writing Frankenstein it should have been difficult for him to write a book of the same genre. Still he achieved it and prooved that if there is determination,,nothing is impossible. One of my all time favorites.

Racso from United States

This is a classic novel that I always wanted to read and after putting it off, I finally finished it. Please, allow me to provide a little background about my reading experience. I am a 90's guy and my first exposure to Bram Stoker's Dracula (For better or for worse) was a movie released in 1992. I cannot help but to have imagines of the movie re-play in my mind as I read the novel. I am afraid that I contaminated my imagination with pre-imposed images, characters and situations. As a result, I find myself comparing the novel to the movie at all times. In my humble opinion, the movie does justice to the novel. I couldn't find any disturbing discrepancies between the two. I enjoyed this novel although, at times I felt too much time was dedicated to Lucy's illness and also on Renfield’s mental condition. However, that didn't spoil the novel for me. The characters are a delight, the plot is interesting, the flow is smooth and the Victorian lifestyle described is just the icing on the cake. I strongly recommend this novel.

Ryan from Newcastle, Australia

Finally crossed this book off the list. The style is fantastic, I think its great how the majority of the story is told through journal entries and newspaper clippings, feels almost like you are ready a study guide at university. The story is original, and it is easy to see why a lot of recent books are derivative of Dracula. The characters are a bit different but that may just be because this story was written in the 1890's, but they are well developed and you do get to see a different side of them through their journal entries. Great book, one that everyone should take the time to read.

9.1 /10 from 15 reviews

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A Ruined Chapel by Moonlight

Book review: “dracula” by bram stoker.

That’s the story. I knew it long before I read the book, mostly because I’d seen the 1931 movie.

One thing I didn’t know was that the book was told as a series of letters among the characters. That was an interesting idea, and made the whole thing feel very immediate. Also, the movie minimizes the coolest scene in the book, the arrival of Dracula’s boat in England.

Now comes the part where I’m probably going to get into trouble: I don’t love the book. It is, in my opinion, just okay.

Part of this is not really anything intrinsic to the book. Dracula is iconic, and as such, most of the elements of it that must have seemed amazing at the time have now become clichés. Alas, there is just no way to read Dracula with the perspective of an 1890s Victorian reader.

But there are some books from the 1890s that still feel to me as fresh as if they were written yesterday . You know the book I mean, so I won’t rehash it again.

Dracula , I’m afraid, doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels dated. That’s not to say it’s bad, because it isn’t at all. It’s fine. More than fine, I suppose. It has become become iconic for some reason. What is that reason?

I’m privileged to know many talented writers and artists. One of the things we often talk about is whether art needs to have a meaning or not. The reason for this question is raised not so much by art, but by the field of art criticism, which follows all art but is never as substantial as art itself, like a mere shadow on a wall.

Is a work of fiction just a pure fragment of imagination? Or are there lessons about the real world that we can take away from fiction?

On the most obvious level, Dracula is about a vampire who comes to England. However, in the century-plus since its publication, critics have written all sorts of analyses of the meaning of Dracula . Dracula is “invasion literature.” Dracula is about tradition vs. modernity . Dracula is about Victorian sexual mores .

Is any of this remotely true? Or is it all a bunch of academic navel-gazing?

My feeling is, if you could ask Bram Stoker himself, he’d tell you Dracula was just a cool story about a vampire.

But then… Bram Stoker was a Victorian, and so it is reasonable to suspect that in the process of telling his cool vampire story, he included some elements of himself and the world he knew.

As an example, it is interesting to know that Stoker modeled the character of Dracula after Henry Irving , the most famous actor of the period. Stoker was Irving’s business manager, and it seems he both adored and feared the man. Indeed, he wanted Irving to play the part of Dracula on the stage, but Irving refused, perhaps believing that playing “modern” characters like Dracula (and Sherlock Holmes, BTW) was beneath him.

This is an interesting tidbit, and maybe it tells us something about Victorian society. Maybe the vampire legend’s enduring popularity can tell us other things about society.

Then again, maybe not. Maybe it is just a cool vampire story after all. Either way, though, don’t you want to stick around to find out? 🙂 As I did with the Headless Horseman legend last October, each weekend this month I’m going to take a look at some of the stories related to Dracula and see if there’s anything interesting to be discovered.

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17 Comments

I have a beautiful leather bound volume that collects both Dracula and Frankenstein. Dracula suffers from the natural comparison. It is a very good, if not great, book, but it pales beside Frankenstein. I do like Stoker’s original vision of the vampire and his powers and wish more contemporary vampire fiction would hew closer to it.

What a cool book to have! I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve never read Frankenstein. I should do that.

Hmm, I think I have an idea for next October’s blog post series… 🙂

Hi Berthold. I haven’t read Dracula, but as you said, I do know the story. It’s too bad you didn’t like it too much. You raise a lot of good questions about books and art and our perceptions and the meanings in stories. I was surprised at how good Frankenstein was, written in 1818. Have you read it?

No, I haven’t read it. You’re the second person today to tell me I should! 😀 I guess I know what I’ll be reviewing for next Halloween season. 🙂

Haha – yes I read it for the first time when my son had to read it for his English class. I wasn’t so sure I would like it, but I did!

Interesting, as always, to read your thoughts on one of my favourite books and my favourite vampire novel. 😊 You’re right in that “most of the elements of it that must have seemed amazing at the time have now become clichés” yet that doesn’t stop me still getting caught up in the story. To be honest, I’ve never analysed the story, just enjoyed it for what it is, so can’t add to that discussion.

It’s been yonks since I’ve read ‘Frankenstein’ but I remember enjoying it. Looking forward to seeing what you think of it… might even read it again sometime next year 😊

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to read a book for the first time without knowing anything at all about it? I’m sure Dracula would “wow” me more if I hadn’t already been familiar with the basic plot.

Sounds good. I hear a lot of good things about Frankenstein. 🙂

Victorians loved good ‘spooky’ stories, in the UK it was a custom at Christmas tide at some stage of an evening’s social gathering for folk to hive off to one room and tell each other such tales. Go back to the Georgian and it was over-heated ‘Gothic’ themes. So I guess ‘unreality’ and the ‘disturbing’ side of Nature will always have their appeal. I’ve never read ‘Dracula’ and never felt the urge to, thus sympathise with your reaction. And of course, there will always be proliferation of reactions by readers to many works. There’s the interesting time factor as the years pass one, what might have held you fascinated years ago now does nothing (even irritates) or the reverse.

I love the idea of telling scary stories at Christmas! (But then *I* would, wouldn’t I? :D)

You indulge! Keep the old traditions going. Here’s a summary of one for you, to think on an embellish for a suitable occasion. I heard this as a lad as a radio short story. Two things to bear in mind this was told in the aftermath of WWII when war stories were common and that in the UK there were some strict and often quirky licencing laws in pubs. Anyway, the narrator is a sailor on board a British warship, it is sunk in a battle, he is a survivor, although his memory is muddled. He was aware of being in hospital. He was aware of being, he supposes discharged. Still confused he decides as a good sailor would, is what he needs is a convivial pub and a stiff drink. He finds one, it is a fairly quiet part of the day, which suits him. He decides on a whiskey will suit the situation. He walk up the the bar and says to the bar tender ‘A whiskey please’, the man ignores him; he tries again, still no response. He tries a third time, nothing. In exasperation, as you do he looks upwards and sees the reason why. The sign on the wall says ‘No spirits are served here’

Excellent! I love it. Thanks for sharing. 🙂

Have to agree with you. The story is highly interesting, and the method of telling it through letters is unique, but the story never did it for me. I do have to confess, the Keanu Reeves remake really did it for me, it was so fantastically weird and off-kilter that it felt more unique to me than the book ever did. Blasphemy they say! Bring out the pitchforks! Oh wait, that’s a different monster…

😀 I’ll have to see that one. Weird and off-kilter is very much my thing.

I enjoyed Dracula – however, I 100% get what you’re saying here.

Glad to hear that. I was worried Dracula fans would be upset with me. 😀 And I definitely didn’t dislike the book; it just didn’t dazzle me. Maybe that says more about me than the book…

I know I read it, but honestly don’t remember much about it, apart from the stuff everyone knows. My vampire book of choice is Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. And I did read Frankenstein–pretty much had to, because of Herbert. I wrote a couple of blog posts about my impressions of it, comparing it to HPL’s “Herbert West, Reanimator.” And of course I had to mention my own book too. This was in 2010, when my main purpose for blogging was to publicize my book. Ironically, it appears not one person read either of those posts. But Frankenstein is definitely worth a read.

All right, now I really have to read Frankenstein! 🙂

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Book Review: Dracula

Posted October 17, 2011 by Whitney in Review / 7 Comments

The most famous of seductive evil in Western Literature, blood-thirsty Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But, few, if any, have been fully to Bram Stoker's best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Written in the form of letters and diary entries, Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from his Transylvanian castle to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood he needs to stay alive - the blood of strong men and beautiful women - while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power. In Dracula, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will undoubtedly outlive us all.

Dracula is bone-chilling! My neck prickles just thinking about it. Turtlenecks are a new staple in my wardrobe. In short, its like taking a shower after watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Dracula, by Bram Stoker is a horror romance of sorts as Count Dracula become obsessed with his victims which always happen to be girls and “vunts to suck their blood” which represents a deathly erotic romance. The tale centers around a group of Londoners who become unfortunately, and unwilling acquainted with the Vampire and after claiming a dear friend’s life must kill the blood sucking monster.

Despite the Twilight phenomenon I was really quite ignorant about Vampires (because let’s face Stephenie Meyer has really watered it down) Sure, I won’t deny that I was unaware of the stereotypical garlic repellent and his beverage of choice, but because of my ignorance added an eerie backdrop to the novel. Dracula was a well paced suspenseful novel, filled with shocking twists in Transylvania.

I love stories told through forms of correspondence, I feel it adds a level of intimacy and because letter writing is a lost art has an olde fashioned flare (and yes I realize Dracula was written in the 1800s). Viewing Dracula’s persona from different angles was very enlightening and a very clever concept. At times,because of it being written in first person, you could really feel the characters (especially Mina and Jonathan) travel into insanity and could almost hear the Twilight Zone theme song in the background.

I must admit that after reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula it inspired me to go out and read Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice, because lets face it without Stoker there would be no Rice. Dracula is fantastic, and something you want to bite you teeth into. {Excuse the pun} but it is so true, this novel is absolutely amazing!

Note: Dracula was read not only for my enjoyment but also for the Dracula Read-Along hosted by Allie at Literary Odyssey

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7 responses to “ Book Review: Dracula ”

I agree. This is also one of my favorites and it is one that haunts me as well, but it began my love for the real vampire-esque stories. Epistolary novels are absolutely wonderful.

I immediately checked this book out after seeing Coppola's film version starring Gary Oldman as the famed Dracula. I loved it the book and I loved that it was written in correspondence. I too like books written in this fashion. Dracula will definitely be a reread for me.

Great reveiw, Whitney!

I actually finished this book today. I had no idea there was a group read. It was a good read!

Could you believe that I, a big fan of vampire books, have never read Dracula. I must do that soon. Great review!

Mina was my favorite character and I was very impressed with Stoker for including her. To have such an important, powerful role reserved for a woman, at this time, must have taken a lot of guts.

I also enjoyed this one a lot and am glad to have finally read the "Father" of all vampire books, though I'm not particularly into vampires.

Congrats on finishing and linking-up – you'll be entered in the participant giveaway!

Did you read Inferno? I enjoyed that as well (I read the original American English trnaslation by Longfellow).

I read this one last year…and yes, I actually loved it! I thought the first four chapters with Jonathan's encounter with the Count in Trasylvania was the scariest part of the entire book. But I wasn't complaining.:D

I haven't read Rice, but I love the movie based of her book on the same name.

You should read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova now. 🙂

Book Review: Dracula

DRACULA | Bram Stoker 2018 | Paper Mill Press First published 05.26.1897 Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Jonathan Harker has recently been sent to Transylvania for a work assignment to assist a man known as Dracula with his move to England. While residing at his home, a castle upon a hill, Harker comes to realize that there are strange things happening around him. His host never seems to dine with him, he is only available in the evenings, and where are all the staff?

Harker comes to the near impossible sounding conclusion that Dracula is driven to move to England in order to spread his curse of the undead. Who would possibly believe this theory? Told through journal entries from various involved parties, such as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, the reader is introduced to Dracula and his threat against mankind. In order to stop him a small group of men and women must rally to fight back against and nearly indefitable foe. Can Dracula be stopped?

DRACULA by Bram Stoker is the classic gothic tale that launched an entire world of vampire mythology. While for years I have read books and watched shows and movies based on this book I have picked it up. What a mistake! For a book that is over 200 years old it holds the test against time incredibly well. From the moment I picked up DRACULA I knew I needed to know more and wanted to keep reading until I had hit the very last page.

Stoker took on the unique challenge of telling his story solely through the use of journal entries. Not only did he use this method, but he also chose to alternate between several main characters who the entries were from. It sounds confusing and as though it has a high chance of not working, however, Stoker expertly wove everything together. I loved that the entries were generally short or broken down by date. This set the pace to be faster, as well as encouraged me to keep reading well past my bedtime.

The atmospheric quality to this story has to be one of the major points that make it a favorite classic for me. I could feel the suspense in what would happen every time the fog would roll in or the wolves would start howling. I was uncomfortable when the characters found themselves in some scene that was shrouded in darkness. Stoker truly made the story come to life for me with his attention to detail!

So, why if you loved the book so much didn’t it become a perfect 5 stars? I had a lot of issues with the random instances of dialect from people who spoke old English or with the slang of their time. These instances didn’t fit with the majority of the story and while I appreciate that Stoker was going for authenticity, I could not get into these sections. Another issue I had deals more with the time frame the book was written in and Stoker’s use of misogyny when it came to Mina. She couldn’t possibly be involved in the initial plans to stop Dracula because she was a woman…insert eye roll here. I did appreciate later Stoker changed this to have more meaning behind why Mina should be left out of certain parts of the take down strategy.

If you have yet to read DRACULA, I highly recommend adding this classic onto your TBR!

This book is available to buy from: Amazon | Book Depository

Disclosure: What Jess Reads is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This in no way influences my opinion of the above book.

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3 thoughts on “ Book Review: Dracula ”

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Hi! Sorry if this is out of the blue but I’ve been researching if the Paper Mill Classics are unabridged before I invest in them and this review came up. Can you confirm? This seems like one of the books in that line.

Hi there! I only own Dracula from this line, but it’s the full, unabridged version, so I’m assuming the others likely are too.

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The latest book reviews and book news, dracula: book review.

Dracula by Bram Stoker novel

Dracula is well known now and it is all because of the novel of the same name. Bram Stoker wrote the novel in 1897 and now his character is a regular monster. Find out why the world fell in love with Dracula and what the original Dracula was like.

Dracula: Summary

Jonathan Harker has recently become an English solicitor and is on his way to Transylvania to visit Count Dracula at his castle. During his stay, Jonathan helps Dracula but soon realizes he is a prisoner in the castle. There are no servants in the castle and something is off about Dracula.

To pass the time, Jonathan explores the castle and runs into some unwanted company. As Dracula plans to head to England, Jonathan knows that his end his near. That makes him plot to escape while Dracula is away.

In England , the Count arrives on a ship during a storm. Soon after, he terrorizes the town from the shadows at night. Lucy Westenra is bitten by the vampire and her fiancé, Arthur Holmwood calls on his old friend, professor Abraham Van Helsing to diagnose Lucy. The fight for Lucy’s life takes center stage and Dr John Seward and Quincey Morris, two friends of Lucy who also proposed to her but were rejected, take on the demon of the night.

Dracula however is no slouch. He has been alive for centuries and has knowledge and experience that is unmatched. Add to that his super strength and his many power which include turning into a bat, wolf or a person, summoning a storm, fog, or snow, and hypnotic, telepathic and illusionary abilities. Will he terrorize England or will his reign come to an end?

The novel is told in the form of letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles . One thing I will say should have been written differently were the chronological order of the dairy entries and letters. Some letters go back in time and make you remember what already happened or you will get lost.

As mentioned in the summary, Dracula has a lot of powers that were seemingly left out when he became mainstream. Like the fact that he can walk on buildings like a reptile. Getting to see Dracula as he was intended made the novel worth reading.

The reason why this novel became a mainstream success was because of how scary It was deemed. Critics said it was far too scary and using England as the setting didn’t sit well. Some people found Dracula’s weakness of garlic hilarious, adding to its popularity. Stoker’s approach to the vampire legend was well received for the most part.

Lastly, I want to talk about the tone of the novel and how it comes across. It was published in 1897 so there is going to be a disconnect. The characters felt like an exaggeration and didn’t feel like authentic. They were too nice and kind and angelic. Not that it was a bad thing. It is no wonder the protagonists aren’t remembered and only Dracula is.

I enjoyed the novel overall and I am glad to have read it. It is long and while it could have been shorter, it doesn’t take away from the novel. You will see the plot twists coming but the story itself is a great one that I do recommend if you are curious about the origins of Dracula.

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Why Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula is and always will be the best adaptation of the legendary Bram Stoker novel

Opinion: We look back at the best on-screen depiction of everyone's favorite vampiric count

Cinema has no shortage of vampire movies, more specifically films that take inspiration from the very piece of literature, that although wasn't the first vampiric tale, was the one that shaped our whole view of the fanged beast - Bram Stoker’s Dracula. From the 2022 movie The Invitation to Dracula: Prince of Darkness, there is a whole range of flicks to sink your teeth into, but none will ever be a better adaptation than Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Now, I’m not saying it is the most well-executed - I’m looking at you Keanu Reeves and that concerning English accent - but in terms of style, visuals, and staying true to its source material, Coppola’s Dracula ranks higher than any other retelling in my books.

Staying true to its source material

Much like Stoker’s 1987 masterpiece, the movie takes place in 19th-century Romania where Dracula lures English solicitor Jonathan Harker to his residence. However, when The Count sees a picture of Harker's fianceé Mina, his journey to England becomes a quest for love. Aside from a few romantic sub-plots to keep the ‘90s audience happy, the film is loyal to Stoker’s novel.

Although Hammer Horror’s Dracula is a great adaptation, it does feel very '50s-esque, as does Nosferatu with the German expressionist era, whereas Coppola’s Dracula tries to be as exact as possible in being faithful to the novel setting the film in the Victorian times, not letting the movie’s own date of creation inspire it.

Not only this, but the movie also encapsulates the feeling the story perpetuates, from the building of suspicion when Harker makes his way to Dracula’s home and the dread when he arrives at the bleak and cold castle. This is exactly how we imagine it when reading the novel.

It’s a visual feast

Aside from staying true to the book’s storyline, the film also manages to reflect the novel’s many themes and tropes traditional to gothic literature such as passion and the fear of the unknown, mixing intense terror and death with emotion and romance. Yes, more sophisticated Dracula movies are to be considered, but if you read Stoker’s work, it is full of depravity and fantastical scenes that are supposed to be far-fetched and unbelievable.

Coppola’s film achieves this largely through its dark and seductive cinematography, time-appropriate setting, and historically accurate yet almost pantomime-like costumes, ditching Dracula’s long black cape and slicked-back hairstyle for a red velvet robe, long fingernails, and ash hair. As for the wider cast, they wore authentically vintage-looking get-ups, making them look like they had stepped right out of 1800s England. It is no surprise that it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction, and won Best Costume Design as well as Best Hair and Makeup.

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On top of this, the film also boasts a star-studded cast full of genre legends from Harry Potter’s Gary Oldman as Dracula, Keanu Reeves as Harker, Beetlejuice’s Winona Ryder as Mina, The Silence of the Lambs ’ Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, along with Saw’s Cary Elwes and Monica Bellucci.

Gary Oldman is the perfect Dracula

When you think of Dracula you probably have Bela Lugosi’s mysterious and aristocratic version in your mind or Christopher Lee’s animalistic and menacing take, but in my opinion, none compare to Oldman whose transformational journey as Dracula lets the monster be somehow both creepy yet emotional and romantic.

When we first meet Dracula, we are given a backstory to his start as a Vlad the Impaler-inspired Romanian ruler who faces a great loss when his wife commits suicide, forcing him to live out his eternal life alone. When we next see him, he looks closer to a corpse, and his behavior towards Harker is extremely off-putting and predatory. But when he travels to London to seek out Mina, he is young again with flowing hair and charm - however, let’s not forget the time he turns into a giant dog. The fact we see him in so many forms gives us multiple sides to the character.

Another reason Oldman’s vamp trumps all others is his emotional side. Nowadays, vampires have become a romantic element in film and television from Twilight to The Vampire Diaries. I believe that Oldman’s Dracula is partly responsible for this phenomenon, as he is one of the most swoon-worthy out there. His continuous longing for love and consumption of loss adds an emotional depth and psychological complexity to the character, almost making him seem human. And who can forget that infamous line, “I’ve crossed oceans of time to find you.”

All in all, no one can deny that Coppola’s take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a perfect dedication to the novel, celebrating traditional gothic tropes and bringing them to love with the use of costume and setting. On top of this, Oldman’s outstanding performance as Dracula brings nuance to both the character's past and his journey through the novel.

For more, see our list of the best vampire movies , or keep up to date with upcoming horror movies heading your way this year.

I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering TV and film for SFX and Total Film online. I have a Bachelors Degree in Media Production and Journalism and a Masters in Fashion Journalism from UAL. In the past I have written for local UK and US newspaper outlets such as the Portland Tribune and York Mix and worked in communications, before focusing on film and entertainment writing. I am a HUGE horror fan and in 2022 I created my very own single issue feminist horror magazine.

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With old, one-eyed Chico, a rescue dog. Credit... Balazs Gardi for The New York Times

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May 18, 2024

Back in 2013, I got a call from Bill Maher.

He was being hit with a lawsuit by Donald Trump and thought it would be “comedy gold” for my column. The host of HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” had joked that Trump was the love child of a human woman and an orangutan — what else could explain the tangerine hair? Maher offered to give $5 million to charity if he could see the birth certificate of Trump, who had offered $5 million to charity for records to verify the birthplace of President Barack Obama.

Trump failed to see the parody and thought the joke was mean. The flamboyant mogul told his lawyer to answer Maher with a letter: “Attached, hereto, is a copy of Mr. Trump’s birth certificate, demonstrating that he is the son of Fred Trump, not an orangutan.” Then Trump sued Maher for $5 million, before dropping the suit eight weeks later. (The Trump representative who threatened to refile the suit was none other than Michael Cohen.)

“He’s not even a real person,” an exasperated Maher told Conan O’Brien about Trump at the time. “He’s just like a pop reference from the ’80s.” It was like beefing with J.R. Ewing from “Dallas,” he said.

I told Maher that it wasn’t worth writing about Trump and his silly lawsuits and risible presidential aspirations.

“Forget it,” I said. “Trump doesn’t matter.”

Oh, well. Nobody gets it right all the time.

At 68, the comedian is still a thicket of thorns in Trump’s side. He led the pack in 2015, taking the threat of Trump seriously. He led again in 2020, warning that Trump would not accept the results if he lost. And he predicts the same this time if Trump loses again — two grooms showing up at the altar on Jan. 20 (which happens to be Maher’s birthday).

“It’ll be disputed and it’ll be ugly,” he said over a recent dinner at Craig’s, a Hollywood show business canteen.

Maher has fun comparing the heavily made-up Trump to a drag queen. After Trump’s team asked for a mistrial in the New York hush-money case, Maher japed that the former president’s drag name was “Miss Trial.”

But the comedian is about more than one-liners these days. He has become our own prickly, patriotic Will Rogers, drawing acclaim — and fire — for his yeasty interviews and his lacerating editorials at the end of “Real Time,” taking on the right, the left, the media, romance, college campus protests, cancel culture, victim culture and technology gone awry.

His new book, “What This Comedian Said Will Shock You,” is the “crème de la crème,” as he says, of a decade’s worth of his editorials intended to “break through the bubbles.”

“If he sees hypocrisy, disingenuousness, cruelty or intellectual dishonesty, he calls it out,” said Richard Plepler, who worked with Maher as head of HBO and now heads Eden Productions at Apple TV. “We’re living in an environment where nobody seems willing to listen to anything but their own tribe, and Bill has this really preternatural ability to open up people’s ears so they maybe, God willing, learn something.”

Maher evokes the twin archetypes of the wisecracking kid who sat behind you in school and the grumpy uncle who sits next to you at Thanksgiving. He’s a rebel with a cause: He actually cares about the things he complains about, so there’s heart behind the cynicism.

Jerry Seinfeld called the consistently high level of Maher’s editorials “shocking.” “Your brain is worthy of all the attention it gets,” he teased Maher on “Club Random,” Maher’s podcast.

His range may be explained by something Maher, a Cornell history major, writes in his book: “I watch the History Channel like most guys watch Pornhub.”

He is not universally beloved. Some people find him smug; some think he has been red-pilled. His show has been nominated for an Emmy 21 times without a win.

A photo of Bill Maher and Donald Trump in formal attire. Accompanying Trump is his now-wife, Melania, in a white gown.

“I am the love that dare not speak its name,” he said, laughing. “It’s almost ridiculous; I should have won 20!” Growing serious, he said that it no longer stings as much: “What I really have learned now is that, it is good being old when you’re smart in a way you weren’t when you were young. The dumbest thing you can do in life, I think, is to have almost everything and then obsess on what you don’t have.”

But even without a fistful of gold statuettes, he is undergoing what Katie Couric, a guest on “Club Random,” called a “Bill-aissance.”

He seems to make more news than all of the other night-owl comedians combined, no doubt because he breaks free of comedy’s congealed partisan worldview. Unlike most other political commentators, he does not pander to the left or the right.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “The only thing that the two parties really have in common is that they’re both hoping their candidates die.”

Sometimes Fox (which he says he rarely watches) loves him and MSNBC is mad at him, and sometimes it’s the reverse. In a world awash in disinformation, Maher gives blunt, practical opinions, not filtered through ideology or likability, on everything from “Barbie” to Bibi to babies — and why he never had them.

“Why can’t everybody live in my world, in the middle, where we’re not nuts?” he wondered, ordering a shot of tequila to go with his margherita pizza. The dedicated health freak, opponent of treating obesity as body positivity, and Ozempic skeptic has a small bottle with a dropper, dripping into his sparkling water a product called Jing, a bubbly water enhancer with no aspartame, gluten or carbs.

Maher is constantly asked why he makes fun of the left more than he used to.

“Yes, I do, because they’re goofier and more obnoxious than they used to be,” he told his guests, Frank Bruni and Douglas Murray, on his show recently. “They also just became weirder.”

“I’m a comedian,” he told me. “I’m going to go where the ridiculous is.”

About the fans he has lost for not toeing the blue line, he writes in his book, “I do not miss them.”

He thinks that the right is more dangerous and he espouses “the Blue Liquid Doctrine”: “If it’s Trump against Biden, I will vote for Biden’s head in a jar of blue liquid.” But that’s not good enough for his liberal friends in Hollywood, who pester him to shut up about President Biden’s age and gait. (Maher kids that Biden should lean into it and say, “I walk like a toddler with a full diaper, but I believe in democracy.”)

He believes it’s not the job of the liberal commentariat to shore up, and cover up, the weaknesses of the Democratic candidate.

He credits Biden with a fierce, Dracula-worthy will to hang onto the Oval: “He has crossed oceans of time to be where he is, and he’s not going to give it up now.”

The Trump-dictator-we’re-doomed narrative bores him. “When people come up to me and say, ‘What are we going to do?’ I’m like, ‘It doesn’t look to me like the world is just falling apart. Maybe it will tomorrow,’” he told me. “Look, I lost my nervous system under Trump once. I’m not doing it again. When he blows up the world, wake me. I can’t put my nervous system on the line every day for every stupid tweet and every bonehead thing he does.”

While he’s a jade , he admits to “a soft spot for this crazy, mixed-up country of ours.”

He thinks we should stop acting as if we’re heading to a civil war and start talking to each other. He loves his stand-up gigs in red states.

“We have to see each other not as mortal enemies,” he writes, “but merely as roommates from hell.” (He has been in that “bad-roommate situation,” putting white tape through the middle of the apartment.)

At dinner, we talked about the eruption of antisemitism.

“It’s hard to get your head around the thought of people yelling ‘Death to America’ on American soil,” he said.

He is disgusted with progressive students who, as he writes, cheer on Hamas to preside over a country with few constraints against sexual harassment, spousal rape, domestic violence, homophobia and child marriage.

He calls elite universities “the mouth of the river” from which nonsense flows, producing “American-hating hysterics devoid of knowledge. If they had any knowledge about the Middle East or what apartheid really means or genocide, would they be on the side of Hamas, really?”

In ancient courts, the jester could speak the truth to the king with impunity, like Shakespeare’s fools. But, given safe spaces and trigger warnings, being a jester isn’t what it used to be.

“He survived his first cancellation,” said Tina Brown, the media duchess, “and now has become a warrior for the rest of us, absolutely refusing to be careful.”

I got to know Maher after his first cancellation, in 2002 — the literal one of his ABC show, “Politically Incorrect.”

Proving that a 90 percent approval rating is a dangerous tonic, the Bush-Cheney White House decided after Sept. 11 that it would brook no criticism. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, haughtily dressed down Maher when he agreed with a guest that, while they were fiends, the 9/11 hijackers were not cowards.

Maher, and all Americans, Fleischer said, needed “to watch what they say.” ABC dropped Maher’s show.

I wrote a column pointing out that, especially when our country is a target, “we should not suppress the very thing that makes our foul enemies crazed with twisted envy — our heady and headache-inducing clash of ideas. We should dread a climate where the jobs of columnists and comedians are endangered by dissent.”

My idol is Jonathan Swift, so I think that satirists — the other “Swifties” — should be given a long leash. Sometimes they’ll miss the mark, sometimes they’ll be offensive. But we need our jesters to hold up a mirror to our society, now more than ever.

Maher was moved when his producers recently gave him a box that looked like an engagement ring box, with a ring on a chain symbolizing his attachment to his fans.

“This is the relationship of my life,” Maher told me about his loyal audience. “Not that I really wanted kids to begin with, but I would have ignored them anyway if they were tugging on my pants because I had to rewrite this editorial.

“I think that’s a chip in your head that you’re born with: You either like babies or you like fur,” said Maher, a PETA board member. “I just love fur. I can watch humans suffering in a movie, but I cannot watch animals suffering in a movie. I can’t even watch ‘King Kong’ or ‘Godzilla’ or ‘Planet of the Apes’ or ‘Seabiscuit.’”

He was brought up in New Jersey by a nurse and a radio broadcaster (and later editor). “I still have some tapes of him doing the top-of-the-hour news,” he said of his dad. “I have one the day Mickey Mantle retired.”

Maher recalled that he went to school “scared all the time” of the bullies.

“I wasn’t the most picked on,” he said. “I might have been the second most, which puts you in a very precarious position. It’s like the mother dog has a litter of nine and she has eight nipples; the eighth guy’s going to be very insecure. I was the eighth nipple.

“It just put a knot in your stomach all the time. Kids are feral. You have to teach them to be decent.”

He didn’t have much of a social life at Cornell, either. “At the time I was there, I would say it was probably four or five to one, men to women,” he said. “You take a guy who has no game and put him in those odds. Of course you’re going to be lonely the whole time. I was really slow to learn how to just even talk to a girl.”

He was raised Roman Catholic before he was shocked by some news. “I was 13 when it came up at Christmas that my mother’s family side was Jewish,” he said.

“It never even entered my mind to ask why my mother never went to church with us,” he said. “It’s very strange when I look back on it, but back then, it was, ‘Don’t talk about politics or religion.’ Now it’s all we talk about. We’re always at each other’s throats because these are things you’re never going to really agree on.”

He is thinking of giving up stand-up after his next HBO special. “It’s like playing the cello,” he told me. “You got to always be working at it.”

On “Club Random,” where he gets stoned and sips tequila and invites guests to partake of pot or their drinks of choice as well (Seinfeld had coffee; Couric had a paloma), Maher can get downright sentimental, and confessional. He spoke to Martin Short about waking up in the middle of the night with morbid thoughts, by which he meant death. He fretted to Seinfeld that “men have been ruined by the phone and pornography. It’s rapey. It’s domineering. And this is what young men see.” The old days of Playboy, he said plaintively, have been replaced by “horrible things, choking and spanking.”

He has a stake, with John McEnroe, in Woody Harrelson’s Hollywood pot dispensary, the Woods, and recently hung out there with Paul McCartney. “I got to say, he was great,” Maher said.

He sleeps until he wakes up naturally, at about 11 a.m. or noon; then he fasts most of the day because, he said, eating slows you down. “Three meals is just something somebody made up,” he said. “God didn’t put it on a tablet.” He takes his two rescue dogs, Chico, who has one eye and is about 15 years old, and Chula, 10, and shoots baskets and gets high and writes; about 3 p.m., he has a shake with protein powder, yogurt, pumpkin seed butter and chlorophyll, with avocado and tomato “because I was told Hispanic men have very low rates of prostate cancer” — and a light meal at night.

As we left Craig’s, with Maher heading to his gray, all-electric Mercedes, I asked him if he ever felt as though he were beating his head against the wall. He does. But, he said dryly, he’s willing to tie himself to the mast and “keep sailing onward.”

“I don’t want to hate half the country,” he said. “I don’t hate half the country. And I don’t want America to get a divorce.”

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Maureen Dowd is an Opinion columnist for The Times. She won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. @ MaureenDowd • Facebook

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COMMENTS

Dracula Review: A Book For The Ages
Dracula Review: A Book For The Ages. Dracula is a classic of the Gothic Horror genre, particularly the type with scary monsters. It follows a centuries-old vampire's attempts to invade England and the efforts of a group of courageous individuals to stop him against all odds. The book captures latent Victorian anxieties and norms of the age ...
Dracula by Bram Stoker
1,773 books5,035 followers. Irish-born Abraham Stoker, known as Bram, of Britain wrote the gothic horror novel Dracula (1897). The feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornely Stoker at 15 Marino crescent, then as now called "the crescent," in Fairview, a coastal suburb of Dublin, Ireland, bore this third of seven children.
Bram Stoker's Dracula Book Review
This book gives depth to characters, and builds great suspense. The story is written not as a modern horror story but it goes a bit deeper into the story and characters. it is not a cheaply written nothing book. Good story for teens, it is about a vampire so there is blood and creepy-ghostly scares throughout. Show more.
An 1897 Review of Bram Stoker's Dracula
Upon the iconic horror novel's publication 120 years ago, the Manchester Guardian wrote that it had been "an artistic mistake to fill the whole volume with horrors". "Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!". "A writer who attempts in the nineteenth century to rehabilitate the ancient legends of the were-wolf and ...
Book Review: Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'
The Dracula in Bram Stoker's book is not the vampire you might expect. Movies and other pop culture interpretations usually miss the mark when it comes to the novel's central character. Even ...
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Originally published in 1897, Dracula has spawned many modern-day vampires, but this most iconic character still unleashes the mind's deepest, darkest fears. Explore more on these topics Horror books
News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition
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New Life for Dracula
The New York Times. By John Williams. Feb. 3, 2017. In 1898, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" was translated for the first time, into Hungarian. Just a couple of years later, it was published in ...
Dracula (novel by Bram Stoker)
Stoker's Dracula was instrumental in the creation of the vampire trope that has permeated Western popular culture in the forms of novel and film alike. Dracula was well received when it was published, but its success is even better measured by the number of adaptations it inspired. These adaptations began in 1922, when the novel was plagiarized in the silent motion picture Nosferatu, in ...
How Bram Stoker's Dracula Became 'Dracula Daily,' and an Internet
Oct. 5, 2022. Confined by the pandemic to his home in Lawrence, Kan., in the summer of 2020, Matt Kirkland pulled an old paperback of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" from his bookshelf and decided ...
How Did Bram Stoker Dream Up 'Dracula'? A Novel Offers Hints
Stoker, a government clerk who moonlights as a theater critic, is reeling from the visceral intensity of Irving's performance in Dublin as Hamlet. "Eyes glowing red in the gaslight," Irving ...
Dracula by Bram Stoker: Book Review
Great review! I agree that Stoker was quite the feminist supporter — I imagine his characterization of Mina was the one way that he could put her in the book and place her in an appealing way for the times, versus thoroughly shocking and possibly offending the public.
Dracula
Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897.An epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles.It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula.Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count ...
Dracula by Bram Stoker book review
It is neither scary nor boring. And I am fond of horror books. 10/10 ( 2019-06-04) Jakob from Germany. Dracula by Bram Stoker is a wonderful book full of exciting action, suspense and horror. A great book for all generations, not too scary and not too boring. And the thrill leaves you lying on the edge of the seat.
Book Review: "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
It is, in my opinion, just okay. Part of this is not really anything intrinsic to the book. Dracula is iconic, and as such, most of the elements of it that must have seemed amazing at the time have now become clichés. Alas, there is just no way to read Dracula with the perspective of an 1890s Victorian reader.
Book Review: Dracula
Dracula was a well paced suspenseful novel, filled with shocking twists in Transylvania. I love stories told through forms of correspondence, I feel it adds a level of intimacy and because letter writing is a lost art has an olde fashioned flare (and yes I realize Dracula was written in the 1800s). Viewing Dracula's persona from different ...
DRACULA
My review of Bram Stoker's Dracula. A Classic horror novel that has inspired countless writers and film makers.Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DanielBGreene...
Book Review: "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
If so, Dracula could be said to be a novel about xenophobia. However, Dracula — a novel told as a series of letters, journal entries, and newspaper articles — is one of those books where 16 different people could read it and come away with 16 different things to say about it. It's a novel about the fear of the Other (women), and it's a ...
Book Review: Dracula
DRACULA by Bram Stoker is the classic gothic tale that launched an entire world of vampire mythology. While for years I have read books and watched shows and movies based on this book I have picked it up. What a mistake! For a book that is over 200 years old it holds the test against time incredibly well.
Dracula: Book Review
The reason why this novel became a mainstream success was because of how scary It was deemed. Critics said it was far too scary and using England as the setting didn't sit well. Some people found Dracula's weakness of garlic hilarious, adding to its popularity. Stoker's approach to the vampire legend was well received for the most part.
Dracula by Bram Stoker book review
Bram Stoker's Dracula is the quintessential Vampire novel. Without it we would not have Twilight, INterview with a Vampire and many other vampire novels. Alt...
Why Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula is and always will be the best
From the 2022 movie The Invitation to Dracula: Prince of Darkness, there is a whole range of flicks to sink your teeth into, but none will ever be a better adaptation than Francis Ford Coppola's ...
The Truth Hurts
Opinion Columnist, reporting from Los Angeles. May 18, 2024. Back in 2013, I got a call from Bill Maher. He was being hit with a lawsuit by Donald Trump and thought it would be "comedy gold ...

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