The art of fiction: Bram Stoker’s Dracula

‘Oh yes, Dracula,’ said a colleague. ‘Two splendid bits at either end, and 200 boring pages in the middle.’ It was exaggeration, but only slight. Dracula sags in the middle, but that is a reflection of the knockout opening and conclusion. Film adaptations have the luxury of cutting out the fat to concentrate on Jonathan Harker’s torment at the hands of the Count and the exploits of the League, while also emphasising important plot details like flesh, flesh and flesh.  

This is a year for literary anniversaries. Lawrence Durrell is in danger of being lost to posterity, and Dickens remains inimitable. But while you might struggle to identify the essential Dickens novel, there is no such problem with Stoker. Dracula is a beguiling mix of the modern and the mediaeval, of the real and the imagined — nuances that evaded the Spectator’s original reviewer in 1897, who was overawed by Stoker’s ability to shock.