Carmilla

Blech. So much for trying to expand my horizons. After enjoying Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, I figured I could do no wrong with old novellas. It turns out, I could. Boldly reaching as far as I could into the depths of obscurity, I came up with Carmilla, a vampire story from 1872. I figured I could joke around that I had finally gotten into the whole vampire literature craze. Well, I gave this book the old college try and it just didn't deliver. Basically, a young woman and her father live together alone (with servants) somewhere in Eastern Europe. The girl is dying for companionship, and one day another girl the same age, Carmilla, shows up to live with them. The two hit it off. Something about Carmilla fascinates Laura (the narrator) and before long it's clear that Carmilla is seducing her, luring her in and captivating her interest. (Sadly, no lesbian action occurred. I say sadly not because I was jonesing for any, but because, come on, how awesome would 1870s erotica have been to read?) Anyway, Laura keeps waking up at night, terrified, with severe pain in her neck. Laura is growing sicker - and more infatuated with Carmilla - every day. It can't be more obvious at this point that Carmilla is a vampire and that she's coming in to bite Laura every night. But that revelation ends up being the book's climax - and the revealing moment comes from a secondary character who relates a separate incident to Laura and her daddy. The group recruits some vampire hunter and he goes off and destroys Carmilla's tomb. Laura recovers. The book ends. I mean, I get that this tale is 138 years old and that storytelling conventions were different back in Victorian England. Still, this book, and the second half of it especially, just rubbed me the wrong way. Nothing about it was surprising or original in the least, and I struggle to believe it was surprising or original even back in 1872. Oh well. After being somewhat disappointed by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and really disliking this book, perhaps I just need to stay away from nineteenth century literature for a while. I've still got plenty of kids' and science books; as those are at the heart of my backlog, maybe I should just concentrate on depleting those. Whatever. Don't read Carmilla.