The Un-Dead Arose
Books Editor John Spain talks to Dacre Stoker, author of the new Dracula novel and great-grandnephew of Bram
When Dacre Stoker was a kid growing up in Canada, he was used to other children coming around to his house for Halloween parties and asking if they were going to get bitten. He still gets the jokes. "Now that I'm older (he's 51) and can go into bars, people ask me what I want to drink, a Bloody Mary?"
Jokes aside, the connection is real. "My father's grandfather, George Stoker, was Bram's youngest brother. My family members (the Stoker clan spread to Canada and America) were always aware of the connection and proud of it, but we were not really that interested. I didn't really get into it until I was 20 and in college and I read Dracula properly for the first time."
He was hooked, and ever since he has been quietly reading and researching in his own time. He has been living a full and successful life as well, of course. He is a former coach of the Canadian Olympic Pentathlon team, for example, although he now lives with his family in South Carolina in the US. About five years ago, Dacre met a Dracula historian called Ian Holt, who is also a successful screenwriter in New York, and they decided to work together on a sequel to Bram Stoker's original novel. The new book, Dracula: The Un-Dead, is published next week and, fittingly, Dacre Stoker is coming to Dublin for the launch before embarking on a major international publicity campaign.
The new book caused a storm in the publishing world, selling for more than $1m to Dutton US, HarperCollins UK and Penguin Canada. A film version is also in preparation, with shooting expected to begin next June. The book is unique because it is the first Dracula story to be authorised by the Stoker family since the 1931 classic film starring Bela Lugosi.
So what's the new book about? Given that Dacre is Bram Stoker's great grandnephew, it's probably not surprising that this is no schlock knock-off of the original classic but a meticulously researched, complex and beautifully written sequel. Many others have tried to replicate Stoker's horror classic, but none measured up -- until now.
Dracula: The Un-Dead is a bone-chilling novel which is a worthy successor to the original book. Rich in character, thrills and scares, and lovingly crafted as both an extension and celebration of one of the classics of popular literature, it is based on Bram Stoker's own handwritten notes for characters and plot lines that were taken out of the original Dracula. So there is a direct connection.
In the original novel, Dracula comes to England where he uses an old Abbey, which he has got through solicitor Jonathan Harker, as a base. One of his victims is a young woman called Lucy Westernra, who lives in the seaside town of Whitby. Among her admirers is Jack Seward, a doctor, and her friend is Mina Murray, Jonathan Harker's fiancee.
When Lucy becomes ill from a mysterious loss of blood, Seward contacts his old teacher, Dr Van Helsing, for help and he spots the mark of the vampire. They try to save Lucy, but she dies and returns as a vampire and they have to destroy her. Van Helsing and the group of vampire hunters pursue Dracula back to Transylvania, where they eventually behead him and drive a blade through his heart. Dracula's body then crumbles to dust.
The new novel, The Un-Dead, begins in 1912, 25 years after Dracula has turned to dust. Van Helsing's protege, Jack Seward, is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. Meanwhile, an unknowing Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and Mina, leaves law school for the London stage, only to stumble upon the troubled production of Dracula, directed by Bram Stoker himself. It turns out, the characters in Stoker's original novel are as real as Stoker: and that Stoker learned about them and turned their story first into the novel and now into a play.
The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents' terrible secrets, but before he can confront them, he experiences evil in a way he had never imagined. One by one, the band of heroes that defeated Dracula a quarter-century earlier is being hunted down. Could it be that Dracula somehow survived their attack and is seeking revenge? Or is their another force at work?
In the new novel, the story also involves the passing of Dracula's blood line through Mina Harker to her son. Dr Van Helsing is gone bad and is suspected by Scotland Yard of being involved in the Jack the Ripper murders. And a 16th-century vampire countess, one of Dracula's former lovers, is seeking a bloody revenge for what happened to the count in Transylvania.
It's a brilliant sequel which breathes new life (and buckets of new blood!) into the great story. Dacre Stoker thinks the idea is timeless and will never lose its appeal.
"Dracula and the genre has been able to appeal to a wide variety of fans because vampires have been in our folklore for generations and continue to have appeal in pop culture. They represent so many things at so many different levels. A vampire is truly a shape shifter; he represents power, sexuality, romance, adventure, and horror all at the same time."
He thinks the ongoing appeal is proven by the Hammer films and even by the new teen vampire Twilight books. "I have enjoyed watching the old films as well as the 1992 Coppola version. I respect the following that Twilight and True Blood have attained," he says. But, of course, nothing compares to the original.
So how influential does he think Dublin was in Bram Stoker's creation?
"There are many theories on what influenced Bram in the creation and writing of Dracula," he says. "The most credible theories centre on fact. The facts surrounding Dublin involve the time Bram spent as a sickly child, being told stories by his mother, many about Irish folklore, and the cholera epidemic that she lived through."
Dacre Stoker will be in Dublin next Wednesday and Thursday, but it won't be his first visit. "I was in Dublin last May for the One City, One Book Festival, which had chosen Dracula as the book. I retraced a lot of Bram's footsteps then with the assistance of my cousin Douglas Appleyard. It was very interesting indeed."
Over the past five years, Dacre also spent time researching the London of 1912 in order to write the book. "We owed it to Bram to be detailed and accurate", he says. And he is happy with the result of the work. Over 600 pages of the original Dracula were edited from the final work and they have drawn on that, for characters and plot.
Dacre and his wife, Jenne, also spent time in the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, where Bram Stoker's original, handwritten notes are on display. Plus Dacre had access to all the private family papers. All went into the mix to complete the sequel, which has Bram Stoker's original title, The Un-Dead (it was changed by the publisher when the book was first published back in 1897).
So will the new book last as long? "Believe me when I say we and Bram have some real big surprises for the fans -- plot twists and characters that have been hidden from the public since 1897," he says. With any luck, it should go on forever.
Dacre Stoker will be talking about the family legacy and how he used Bram's notes as the basis for his new book at a talk in Pearse Street Library in Dublin next Wednesday at 6.30pm.
