From Publishers Weekly
Renfield, the bug-eating madman who skulks on the periphery of events in Bram Stoker's Dracula, takes center stage in Lucas's pastiche of Victorian penny dreadfuls. His Boswell is John L. Seward, administrator of the local sanitarium, who presents the personal interviews, diary extracts and conversations that make up this book as information that never made it into Stoker's novel. Unlike his traditional hysterical caricature, the Renfield of this Dickensian account is a sensitive foundling whose childhood hunger for love was never fulfilled by cruel peers and adults. Even his infamous obsession with animals begins as a search for affection from childhood pets. A superb storyteller, Lucas (Throat Sprockets) mimics Stoker's style so well that it's hard to distinguish his own writing from passages interpolated from Dracula. Nevertheless, his achievement is dubious. The Shakespearean fool of Stoker's tale, Renfield is best in his bit part as a commentator whose insane remarks are both eerily prescient and a dark reflection of his evil vampire master. This fully humanized character study will appeal mostly to readers who didn't get enough of him in Dracula.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Renfield, a minor but memorable character in Bram Stoker's Dracula is best remembered as the vampire's rat-eating devotee. Now Lucas gives Renfield his due, focusing on Dr. Seward's sessions with him, which in this novel delve into Renfield's sad childhood and his seduction by the dark side. While Dr. Seward nurses his broken heart after Lucy Westenra rejects his offer of marriage in favor of that of his friend, Arthur, he draws out Renfield's story, from abandonment as a young child to the household of the vicar who raised him to the several families who take him in over time. Renfield's closest attachment is to Jolly, a mouse, until the beautiful but sinister Milady comes into his life. Lucas does an impressive job of rendering the Victorian sensibilities and echoing Victorian writing as he recounts Renfield's sad coming-of-age and Seward's research and heartache. Devotees of Dracula will want to sink their teeth into this clever retelling of the vampire tale from Dr. Seward's and Renfield's perspectives. Kristine Huntley
Copyright &#; American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Tim Lucas is the author of the acclaimed novel Throat Sprockets and the mammoth critical biography Mario Bava -- All the Colors of the Dark. The editor and copublisher of Video Watchdog, the award-winning monthly review of fantastic cinema, he lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Read more
-