Book Review: The Book of Renfield (original) (raw)

My first review will be on The Book of Renfield, by Tim Lucas.

My overall feeling of the book is: meh. I picked it up because I'm currently trying to adapt Stoker's

Dracula (the novel, not the movie) into a play, and Stoker never gives the audience much insight into the character of Renfield. The amount of info on Renfield can be summed up as such: He's an inmate at the insane asylum, he becomes a pawn of Dracula's, he turns on Dracula when he meets Mina, and Dracula kills him for his betrayal. Because Stoker never lets the audience read anything that Renfield (may have) written (unlike the narrators of Stoker's novel), it was frustrating to me that I couldn't truly get a handle on Renfield's character.The Book of Renfield is supposedly a real manuscript compiled by Dr. Seward, who supposedly actually lived. Dracula was another real manuscript compiled by real people, but the people involved gave the material to Bram Stoker, and that's how the "true" story of Dracula was able to get published. The narrator here is Dr. John Seward, the asylum proprietor. After Renfield's death, he felt it was time to publish the story of how Renfield succumbed to Dracula so easily; hence, the novel.

Renfield shares his history with Dr. Seward in a series of "Patient's Oral History" reports. Renfield was adopted as a toddler by a village priest with the same name. He lives his childhood in the village and is persecuted for being weird. Renfield -- which is the name given to him by his "Father," the priest -- knows that he doesn't have a "normal" family life, and he longs for a mother figure to look up to. His priest "Father" sends him to a true family in the village, but Renfield messes the foster situation up when the mother has a child. His next foster family provides him with foster siblings nearer to his age, and they torment the orphan. Renfield finds a mouse, whom he names "Jolly." Renfield falls in love with the mouse, who gives him the unconditional love he has wanted forever. You can guess right from when Renfield gets Jolly that the relationship with his pet isn't going to turn out well. He goes back to live with Father, and then we find out how Renfield came to be on Father's doorstep.

After the Oral History is finished, the book borrows heavily on Stoker's original novel. (Lucas, when using text from

Dracula, bolds the text -- the last forty pages are so are 90% bold.) When Renfield dies (which is actually the prologue of the novel), the book just stops, with an epilogue "written" by Dr. Seward's "great-grandson," who found the manuscript in the attic and published it in 2005.

Overall, the plot was enjoyable -- it explained in details that made sense to the original novel how this little-explained character became so important. But at the end, I found that reading this book was like reading good, well-thought-out fanfic: the characters are written in character "according to canon," the plot takes its base in the original plot, it makes sense, but no new information is gathered. It's like if someone rewrote

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from Kreacher's point of view.

I do think, however, that if I hadn't read so much information on

Dracula and Bram Stoker et al previously to this novel, I may have enjoyed it more.

Conclusion: If you liked

Dracula but felt a little empty in regards to Renfield's character, then this is a book I'd recommend -- just don't expect any true epiphanies at the end of it.

Grades:
From a normal reader's perspective: B
From a "

Dracula" fanatic's perspective: C