I stayed up until 3 am to finish it. I knew I would regret it today and I kinda do … I just woke up, and I hate waking up when, you know, it’s PM and not AM – but I just could not put the book down. I even fell asleep briefly at one point – with candles blazing all over my apartment – here, there, in the kitchen, the hallway, my room … Lovely. I could have burned up in my sleep. But I woke up maybe 20 minutes later – and slogged myself back to the book. It was unthinkable that I would put the book down with only 50 pages to go. So I kept going. My back cramped, I hunched over it, sitting up in my bed … and finally finished it. Naturally, when I went to sleep after that – I had a dream that I cut someone’s throat. Lovely. I KNEW that too as I kept reading. It got very scary at the end and I thought, “I’m gonna regret this …” But I finished it.
It’s quite a book. It’s terrifying, and actually – very sad. It ends up being about loss. Dealing with loss. Letting people go. If someone you loved was – you know – bit by a vampire – and you knew that they were now “undead” … how would you let them go? How would you deal with this? The postcards from Helen to her daughter were, for me, some of the saddest parts of the book. Her feeling unclean, not clean enough to be near her daughter. She would contaminate her child and so she left. But what a sacrifice.
And believe it or not, I did NOT see the ending coming. The one in the Epilogue. I had a feeling this wouldn’t be a “happily ever after” book – and I went back and looked at the prologue and saw that the very first sentence was something like, “After a shocking event, I have found myself wanting to tell this story …” I had forgotten that. So … in our narrator’s present-day life – and we know that she is now in her 50s … there has been a “shocking event”? What could that be?
When the librarian in Philadelphia came running out after her, saying, “You left these behind on the table …” I STILL didn’t see it coming.
And once I read what she had left on the table – once it was revealed … I thought: Of course. Of course. This is how it MUST end. There is no other way for this book to end.
Sad. I found the book to be very sad. Not in a page-by-page way (not like Atonement is sad – where the entire book is suffused with absolute tragedy) … in a page-by-page way, the book is a thriller. A horror story, a literary detective story, a romp through Eastern Europe chasing down leads … It has no introspection, almost no subtext. But added up all together … when I closed the book … I felt sad. Sad about loss. Losing people. Having to let people change. Having to let people go. Not just when they die … but when they have life events that change them, or alter them … Things do not stay the same. We cannot get attached to things remaining unchanged. We have to just keep … letting … go … It is one of the hardest things in the world.
I didn’t see the ending coming, either, although I figured out fairly early on who The Historian must be. I did the exact same thing you did. It was a Friday night and I had about 100 pages left and I simply could not put the damn thing down. The book has a beginning, a middle, and an end and does it ever gather momentum. Glad you enjoyed it.
BTW, I had read an excerpt from one of its previews that included the line:
“My dear and unfortunate successor:”
Didn’t have a clue what it was about but I had to have it.
Damn, red. You’ve got me searching out my favorite passages.
Kostova’s description (or – Paul’s description) of Dracula’s library made me drool. I SO wanted to look thru those books … but, you know, without Dracula hanging over my shoulder, staring longingly at my milky white neck.
You’re the only person I’ve seen discuss the book. Nobody else in my personal circle’s read the book. It’s gratifying to me that you have some of the same reaction to it I did. Somehow, I needed to keep reading it, even though I felt like reading the book wasn’t putting me into a much better place, mentally.
I should say that I read the book when I was going through a fairly rough patch last year…. breakups, deaths in the family and all that fun stuff….
Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy it, nor do I think it’s not a great read.
I might try to re-read it in a couple of years…right now, I just associate it with a time in my life that was, I dunno, just plain rough.
Tommy – I’m sorry you had such a rough patch. I didn’t realize.
And yeah – the book is rather, uhm, DARK already – so I can imagine how if you are going thru a rough time it would be like piling coals on your head!!
A good friend of mine whose judgement I rely on recommended The Historian to me. I think this review and comment-conversation has confirmed that the book will join my Thousand sometime soon. :) Thanks for sharing!
The last book I can remember being so obsessed with was Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I was in college (LONG ago) and had the flu pretty badly one weekend, so I picked it up on a Friday night and stayed in bed for two days doing nothing but inhale all 560 pages of that book.
I was in a mild delirium the entire time, completely feverish, which suited the novel’s tone perfectly. I remember unraveling the final mystery on the last page – then falling asleep, spent.
I just finished this book too, and liked it alot. Very dark, but nice and elaborate.
offtopic – I’ve been having what I think of as a Shelia-like moment… I’ve been explaining the Gunpowder Plot to my daughter (courtesy of Guy Fawkes Day), starting with Henry VII, from memory. I have read just a little about this period in history, methinks.
Okay, uncle already, it’s on the list. :-)
Kidding aside, you all (Sheila and commenters alike) make out a heck of a case for this book. I’m looking forward to reading it once I have the leisure.
This is on my table waiting to be read!
Great book, this is making me want to re-read it. Very much enjoyed it, and remember wishing the author had other books I could sink my teeth into (er?), it was that good I wanted to prolong it.