Matt's Reviews > The Historian

“It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself – because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands. But my regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend, because only by someone who needs such vile information will this letter someday be read. If you are not my successor in some other sense, you will soon be my heir – and I feel sorrow at bequeathing to another human being my own, perhaps unbelievable, experience of evil. Why I myself inherited it I don’t know, but I hope to discover that fact, eventually – perhaps in the course of writing to you or perhaps in the course of further events…”
- Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian

I would have enjoyed being at the pitch meeting for Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian.

Well, most people think Dracula isn’t real, Kostova must have explained. What this book supposes is that not only is he real, but he’s still alive, and wreaking havoc on the world.

She must have paused here, expecting, perhaps, to be thrown from the room. Allowed to remain, she plunged forward.

My main character is a historian, she would have continued. All the action takes place in libraries, and consists of primary source research. Yes, primary source research. As in, looking at really old writings, and then discussing them, a lot.

She would have paused for breath, at this moment.

Also, it is over 600 pages long.

Clearly, that meeting went well.

The Historian was the “it” book of 2005. It came with a huge advance and big expectations and a national promotional tour. From the start it was a bestseller, capitalizing on the success of The Da Vinci Code, with which is shares more than a few similarities.

I purchased The Historian back in 2005, and it has sat on my bookshelf ever since. A lot of time has passed since then. I was young, and single, and childless, and I hadn’t even heard of Game of Thrones. Now I’m not so young, single, or childless, and at times I wish I’d never heard of Game of Thrones. All that time sitting has been rough on The Historian. It now looks as old and worn as one of the ancient documents fondled so lovingly by the characters who populate the novel. I’m not sure what persuaded me to finally read it, other than a gnawing guilt that I paid cover price for it twelve years ago.

While The Historian’s premise is simple, the plot is hopelessly convoluted. Like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this is an epistolary novel, with large chunks of it coming in the form of “letters” written by various characters.

The story unfolds in three different time periods. The central thread is set in the 1970s and is narrated by the unnamed daughter of a historian-turned-diplomat named Paul. The daughter stumbles upon an old book that, like the VHS tape in The Ring, brings nothing but trouble to the reader. Paul eventually leaves his daughter to embark on some unfinished business; the daughter, needless to say, pursues him.

The second timeline is set in the 1950s. These portions are comprised of letters written by Paul to his daughter. They detail his pursuit – along with a companion named Helen – of both Dracula, and his mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi, who has gone missing.

Finally, there is a briefer arc set in the 1930s, made up by letters written by Rossi himself.

The plot contrivances and temporal leaps are not inherently difficult to follow. However, the aesthetics of The Historian lead to confusion. I didn't have any problem with the Rossi letters set in the 1930s. Kostova makes clear that we’re reading a letter by providing a dateline, and setting the letter in italics. The Paul letters, on the other hand, are given only quotation marks. In other words, huge chunks of the novel (the Paul-Helen-1950s thread is the book’s lengthiest) consist of a nested narrative, ala Joseph Conrad. This means quotation marks. A lot of quotation marks. You have to pay close attention to shifts between the unnamed daughter’s story and Paul’s story. Both are told in first person, with little use of proper nouns. The only indicator – as I’ve indicated – are quotation marks. This not only causes uncertainty, but annoyance. I had to keep rereading sentences to separate narration from dialogue. At one point, the Paul letters decide to get a little meta, so that there is a letter within a letter. You know what that means, right? Quotation marks on top of quotation marks. Just quotation marks all the way down!

(It’s a taste thing, but I hate nested narrative. For this reason, I don’t have a great relationship with Joseph Conrad).

One of the interesting things about The Historian is its languorous pacing. Things don’t really snap into gear and start moving until around 200 pages in. Those first couple hundred pages were more like a European travel guide than a historical thriller. Paul and his daughter travel around, seeing cool sights, eating various biscuits, and having long conversations. Despite the lack of inertia, these pages were my favorite. Kostova’s great gift is in description. She is excellent at breathing life into a place, whether that’s a sunny afternoon on the Piazza San Marco in Venice, a glimpse at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, or a foreboding monastery in Communist-run Bulgaria. My wife and I had our third child not too long ago, so the only traveling we’re doing is the midnight journey into madness. It’s nice, then, to visit exotic locales, if only in the mind. Kostova also has a Tolkien-esque thing for food and drink. The reader is treated to many vicarious meals as the characters hopscotch around the globe. Even when Kostova’s creations are in gravest danger, they are never too near death to have a pleasant cup of tea.

Even as the plot gradually tightens, there is never much action. Sure, there are bursts of movement. Mostly, though, The Historian takes on a predictable pattern. Paul and Helen go to various countries, find an old monastery/church/library, and speak with someone who is either totally helpful or totally against them (one of their nemeses is the “evil librarian”; not kidding, that’s what he’s called). They learn a clue, make their plans, and then head to the next destination. One is tempted to say that The Historian attempts to do for historians what Indiana Jones did for archaeologists. Except that isn’t entirely true. The historians in this novel really act a lot like real historians, except on meth. Paul and Helen visit archives, peruse old-timey documents, and attempt to decipher the past. This is rather typical for a researcher, save for the part about being stalked by the undead.

Neat tourist locales and sumptuous repasts cannot entirely hide the fact that everything else is thin gruel. The characters are props, not people. Nobody has any personality, or depth, or even a quirk. Well – that’s not entirely true. Paul’s quirk is that he keeps “groaning.” Seriously. His only reaction is to groan, or to stifle a groan. Jeez, Paul, grow up! You aren’t six anymore. The putative main character – the daughter/overall narrator – doesn’t even have a name. There isn’t a believable interaction in 642 pages. Paul sets out to find Rossi, his mentor, because…Why? To drive the story. We are told that Paul “loves” Rossi, but the key word is told. The book tells us how to feel, instead of convinces us with rich characterizations. There are, in fact, enormous spans of time in which Paul doesn’t think about Rossi at all, though he remembers to describe every meal he eats in his “letters”.

(A brief rant about epistolary novels. In short: they are such a silly conceit. It just takes me out of the novel’s world. Am I really supposed to believe that a character would write a letter hundreds of pages long? Or that this letter would be structured as a novel, replete with withheld information, reams of dialogue, internal monologues, telling details, and cliffhangers? It’s actually dumb. There’s a reason Paul can’t catch Dracula. He’s too damn busy writing his War and Peace-length letter to his daughter.)

The characters are not helped by the leaden dialogue. Just about everything spoken is exposition. I don’t necessarily expect Aaron Sorkin-like exchanges, but still, it’d be nice to have one evocative conversation.

This is a summertime read, so I grade it on that curve. It’s not bad by any means. Certainly, it wasn’t a chore to finish. But I’m also not going to give it an entirely free pass just because it’s a literary “guilty pleasure” (or whatever the term is to describe a book you’re reading when you should be finishing Dickens).

The Historian isn’t nearly as fun as its ridiculous foundation implicitly promises. This should be over-the-top goofy. There should be grand guignol violence. There should be sex, or at least half a million double-entendres. (Alas, there is no sex at all, which happens when you structure a novel as a father’s letter to his daughter). There should be a realization that this material is fundamentally lowbrow, then go even lower (but with class). Instead, Kostova handles this with portentous seriousness. This doesn’t contain any of the gonzo amusement that a globetrotting trip around Europe on Dracula’s heels should rightfully entail.