THE BOOK OF RENFIELD is, ostensibly, the collected records
of Dr. Jack Seward, the head of the Carfax Asylum in Bram
Stoker's DRACULA. It recounts Dr. Seward's interviews with
Renfield prior to, and during, events described in the
famous book.
THE BOOK OF RENFIELD is what you get when someone finishes
reading DRACULA and really wishes that he had more to read.
The author, Tim Lucas, has set about to provide us with
more material, fleshing out two of DRACULA'S characters:
Renfield and Dr. Seward. Lucas has accomplished the rather
peculiar task of providing an extended appendix to DRACULA,
one that is neither critical to the understanding of the
original, nor particularly revelatory.
Which is not to say that it isn't an entertaining read.
Lucas takes great care to write in a similar style to
DRACULA, using the same form of relating his story through
diary entries and transcripts. The tone is suitably creepy,
and Lucas wisely does not try to one-up his inspiration and
out-horror one of horror's seminal works. Nor does he
commit the folly of changing the plot of the original in
order to make his own book more interesting. He also plays
a very delicate game with Renfield's accounts of his youth -
-
the reader is intensely aware of how untrustworthy Renfield
is, but the very lies he may be telling reveal as much about
him as the possible truth. This is a trick that could be
quite annoying if not well executed, and Lucas brings it off
quite well.
There are a few problems with the book. Notably, forewords
and afterwords take great pains to explain the existence of
the book, as part of the "real" story of DRACULA.
Suspension of disbelief is critical to any horror tale, and
drawing attention to that disbelief doesn't help. Then
ludicrous pretension is added to the mix by making
references to September 11th. I won't even go into the bits
equating Dracula to a certain terrorist...
Somewhat more distracting on an immediate basis is the
method by which the author references text originally found
in DRACULA. Quoted text, allegedly edited, is presented
bold face, while the whole versions are presented as
normally (e.g. "He slipped through my hands, and
when I tried to cling to him..."). I can understand the
legal reasons for needing such, but when Lucas continually
sees fit to modify individual words or phrases in the
original texts, it drives me nuts. Instead of just reading
the text, I ended up wondering why "my hands" would be
edited out, and why Lucas saw fit to put it in.
Ultimately, though THE BOOK OF RENFIELD has a few flaws,
its biggest problem is that it isn't really necessary. It
can't hope to be better than the original. THE BOOK OF
RENFIELD is little more than an appendix to DRACULA -- an
interesting side dish, but not nearly as much fun as the
main course.
When we first meet Renfield in Dracula, he is a tortured
soul in decline, a fly-gobbling, Scripture-quoting lunatic
who acts as a haunted harbinger of Dracula's arrival in
England. At the novel's climax, readers discover that
Renfield, under restraint in the asylum of Dr. John Seward,
has been in psychic communication with Dracula all along,
acting as his eyes and ears in expectation of unspeakable
rewards.
Now, in an ingenious work of fiction, author Tim Lucas at
last brings Renfield's own story to light. The Book of
Renfield is a collection of the long-lost private diaries,
professional journals, and wax-cylinder recordings that
comprise Dr. Seward's obsessive study of Renfield. Featuring
appearances by many of the characters from the original
Dracula, Lucas's novel takes on the frighteningly
realistic
tone of a textual documentary as it illuminates the warped
consciousness of Renfield and reveals, through a series of
stories from his childhood, how this poor unfortunate was
predisposed to become the ideal portal for evil.
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