http://www.cinematical.com/2007/06/15/elizabeth-kostovas-dracula-novel-the-historian-getting-treatm/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/25/DDGBKDS8DC1.DTL&type=books

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/movies/archive/moviearchive.php/The_Historian/3355

 Will you kill this man in the name of catharsis? I wouldn't. But producers like to finish him off anyway (Think Titanic, Romeo + Juliet and Blood Diamond).

I closed the hefty, dusty tome of The Historian more than a month ago (Ok, so I'm exaggerating. It wasn't a hefty, dusty to me, but a lightweight paperback. Kostova makes me write like an archaic scholar sometimes). But I couldn't bring myself to blog because I was a wee bit disappointed about the way  things came to an end. For me, it was an abrupt, easy-way-out finale, that even Vlad Tepes' much sought after carcass (or living dead tissue, or whatever), which terrorized my man Rossi into being his pet librarian, was a letdown. That Helen should be the one to pull the trigger and end (?) the reign of terror of history's most wanted bloodsucker is predictably pallid, compared to the grand showdown I envisioned between the narrator and her great-to-the-nth power granddaddy. I imagined our American teenager, knowing what she does about her newfound heritage, plunging the stake into the Vile One's heart, aided quite appropriately by her dad, as a deja vu to...

THE MOST UNFORTUNATE KILLING OF BARTHOLOMEW ROSSI BY HIS OWN FLESH AND BLOOD.

Perhaps the tragic principle necessitates that Rossi should die. One bite away from being a vampire, Rossi had already developed doglike fangs, sallow skin, and a gnawing hunger that comes with the setting sun. He knew it. Paul knew it. Helen knew it. Discovering their blood ties in a secret catacomb under a little-known chapel in Bulgaria, Helen and Rossi look into each other's eyes--hers midnight black, his blue--and daughter and father understood the years of separation, and a moment of forgiveness. Just one moment before Rossi trustingly lies down in his tomb to receive the deathblow from his daughter and his favorite student.

That did it for me. Rossi's death snuffed out the thrill of the quest, the whole point of the story. It's the same disgust I felt when Robbie Turner was left to waste away and die in Atonement. Just the other night I was watching Blood Diamond on HBO, and I cried buckets when Leonardo DiCaprio's character (the TV was on mute so i couldn't hear anything, like the characters' names) bled to death in the wilderness.Is there some cosmic literary rule that says, "Kill your main character to remain credible"? If we look at Shakepeare's roster of heroes, I would pout and say, "Yeah.There exists a sadistic law that sentences protagonists to die to bring home the point of the story." Catharsis, so Aristotle says. Better him than you. Better Rossi than a whole generation of librarians that Vlad Tepes will harass in the future.

Then, Kostova sort of mentions that Helen succombs to a wasting disease  and Paul dies from a landmine blast. She nails the coffins of my next two favorite characters in the same paragraph. I have never felt so much cruelty in my life as a reader. And the narrator? Now a more mature historian herself, she finds the dragon book in her hands again, and I thought, quite maniacally to Kostova, "don't tell me you're writing a sequel to this." I closed the book and fumed for weeks.

Now that I've somewhat calmed down and reverted to my usual level-minded self, I realize that the deaths of Rossi, Helen and Paul were predestined the first time they beheld Vlad's bait--the dragon book. It was like a virus, except that it stayed with a person for years, even decades, and it strikes when one is most vulnerable, rather like having a messed up immune system that's open to invasion. Sanity, rationality and prudence could have been these historian-scholars' antibodies. Passive resistance could have been their antidote. But where's the fun in that? I now understand that Kostova's entire romp into Eastern Europe, the whole thingamajig with the Ottoman Empire vs. Vlad Tepes, was a lesson in taking history seriously. It's been said before: History Repeats Itself. We should learn from our ancestors' mistakes. And, owing my allegiance to Bartholomew Rossi, I have learned that I can be passionate in search of the truth (Hello, Fox Mulder!), but at what price? Once I have the truth in my I-Pod, what should I do with it? And that's the eternal question that I will not even attempt to answer here.

And that, my faithful blog reader, closes my adventure with The Historian.

(More of my amateur casting attempts: I couldn't think of a more appropriately stunning Helen than Kate Beckinsale, who, ironically, was a vampire in the Underworld films.)

It isn't so surprising that Professor Rossi should sire a future historian. Well, not exactly a historian, for Helen Rossi is an anthropologist doing history on the side. Her intrusion into the story irritated me at first, what with my affections for Rossi and Paul growing with each chapter. I thought a woman would complicate things, and true enough, she did.

Helen first struck me as unfeminine, a man-hater whose sole purpose in life is to one-up the men in her life, specifically her estranged father. Whenever she interacted with Paul, it was with veiled contempt, like she equated the latter with her father's caddish behavior (he allegedly left her mother pregnant in Romania in the 1930's).

But like the two professors, Helen Rossi started to grow on me, albeit more gradually. As Rossi's letters began to emerge, she realized the depth of her father's conundrum, until the final realization that her father was forced (he was drugged) to forget her mother.Helen may have begun her quest in revenge mode, but at this point, her search for her father has become more of a desire to meet him, and then save him. I also began to admire the ice and steel that was running through her veins as she accompanied Paul to the best and worst places in Eastern Europe, through castle ruins and Muslim hideouts, behind secret passageways and airless catacombs. Far from being Paul's assistant, she was his equal mission partner. Her mind was a treasure trove of ideas, and her stamina and stubborness was boundless. Not even two vampire attacks (sh'e been bitten twice; a third would turn her into  vamp) could dampen her spirit; she fortified herself with ages-old knowledge of tradition, culture and human nature, a crucifix pendant, and a pistol with  silver bullets. Give her some quirky dialogue, a couple of stakes and blonde hair, and we can start calling her Buffy.

But Buffy she ain't. Paul himself could attest to the strange attraction he felt for the strong-willed Romanian.Her dark curls, olive skin, penetrating eyes...they reminded him of someone (and he's right...but that's for another blog...), but they also made him very protective...and in love. It was mutual, of course, as Helen, in her own cryptic way, confesses to a slightly miffed and jealous Paul, who sensed a rival in the form of Helen's old beau: 

"No...I could not love aqn interrogator--a torturer--probably a murderer.And if I didn't reject him for all this--there would be other things for which I would reject him...they are smaller things, but still very important. He is not kind. He does not know when to say something comforting and when to be silent. He does not really care about history. He does not have soft grey eyes or bushy eyebrows, or roll his sleeves up to his elbow...in short, the biggest problem with him is that he is not you..."

You go, girl.

(More on the Paul-Helen connection and Helen's family ties in the next blogs.)