Thought I'd start things off with a book review. I know all this mention of vampires and zombies comes a bit late in the year, but what can I say - for the true connoisseur, it's never too late. With that in mind, this week's selection is: Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories by Michael Sims.
It's a fun book. I think the most surprising thing about Victorian literature, whenever I read it, is that it's never as dated as I expected it to be. People really are similar, throughout the ages.
There are a few really great stories. I was sure I'd read "The Family of the Vourdalak" quite a few years ago, but I don't think Sims explicitly cited reprint permissions anywhere in the book, so I'm still not completely clear where. At any rate, it was an oldie but goody.
"Varney the Vampire" was completely awful, but that was to be expected. Very like a cheesy silent 'horror' film.
"The Tomb of Sarah" - why is it that if a character comes across something that says, 'For the sake of the dead and the welfare of the living, let this sepulchre remain untouched.', you KNOW, you always know, that it's THAT tomb that they're going to have to move six feet to the left? Predictable mayhem results.
"A True Story of a Vampire" has such a modern beginning. This is the sort of beginning I WISH more modern vampire stories would have. That's the thing that attracts me to the Victorian age, I suppose. Even when they were describing the most unlikely things, often the Victorians seemed grounded. Like they understood life, or expected it to be capable of understanding, in a way we do not, in the dreadful age of postmodernism.
The best stories of the volume, I thought, were "The Deathly Lover" and "Good Lady Ducayne". "The Deathly Lover" had a lot of the romance associated with vampires today - in Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer and their ilk - while I thought it was refreshing that the vampire herself wasn't sorry for what she was. As the story rightly points out, it's we mortals who feel the vampire ought to be tortured, in body or in soul. Why not be content with your lot?
When I read "Good Lady Ducayne", all I could think of was Jo March from Little Women hiding Lady Audley's Secret, or perhaps some other girl of that era and literary kind. But I could see Jo reading "Good Lady Ducayne", and enjoying it. It was a satisfying little tale with a happy ending, though not, strictly speaking, a vampire story. MR James' "Count Magnus" was good, as his stories almost always are, and satisfyingly creepy.
"Luella Miller" made me think of ... is it Robinson? -"Whenever Richard Cory went downtown, the people always stopped and looked at him..." that sort of small town fatalism that channels Sherwood Anderson and Faulkner in equal measures. It had such a good beginning, but the ending fell flat.
On the whole, this was a very interesting anthology. A page turner, if anthologies can be. I'm interested to see what else Michael Sims has written. I am at least certain of never being bored by his work.
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