| Title | : | Lair of the White Worm |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0646418424 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780646418421 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 120 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1911 |
Bram Stoker, creator of Dracula, is one of the most enduring and masterful influences on the literature of terror.
Lair of the White Worm Reviews
-
You might like this book if you believe in the intrinsic superiority of the white peoples over other races, particularly black folks. Since I really don't feel that way I found myself getting more and more irate until the "savage", intrinsically "primitive" "nigger" got killed off whilst attempting murder. One might of course, think that this was the view of the other characters only and it should not be infered that Stoker believed it. Unfortunately, Oolanga is a "nigger" to the narrator, too anf that narrator is not a character and so we must assume that it is Stoker's opinion.
Now with the black guy out of the way, you might think that the offensive attitudes might also go away but that would be to ignore the outrageous sexism and with three major female characters, none of whom die early on, one has to suffer that right to the end. Frankly, I can't explain the masochism that made me finish this book; it was pure self torture.
The sexism is for the most part somewhat more subtle than the racism; the heroine is allowed some strength of will, bravery and independence of mind - until she gets married, at which point she immediately requires her husband's opinion on everything and defers to his view as obviously superior - because he's her husband. Even her strength of will and bravery are nothing compared to his - because he's male, of course. Are you vomiting yet? Again, is this Stoker's view? Well, a male character, an older man who is meant to be a wise, ,knowledgable character, the font of wisdom for the younger protagonists and the reader finds that the Suffragettes, "want principle". Funny, I thought they were fighting for a principle!
One might argue that one should set all this aside, because it was the attitude of the time and instead look at the literary merits of the book when judging it. One would be wrong, however: the times - they were a changing. The Suffragette movement had started. Thomas Hardy had been fighting the cause of women for decades: this was a time for choosing sides. Stoker chose the repugnant side.
So maybe you are a scary person and don't find all this offensive, or maybe you are particularly good at compartmentalising the foulness from the plot and writing. If so you really still aren't in for a treat, or even a mediocre good time. No, you are in for a waste of effort.
The set up might sound familiar; a youngish, dynamic man with an older mentor, full of obscure wisdom and knowledge. Two attractive young women in danger. An ancient evil. (In this case a hilarious one, completely empty of power to horrify or instill terror.) The protagonists more or less don't do anything for an age, then the monster attacks them - there's a scene with a carriage being chased - then some completely baffling actions by the monster. Then a denouement that has been predictable for an age.
The only thing I really liked about Dracula was the powerful sense of dread in the opening section written from Transylvania. Nowhere in this book is there anything even remotely as affecting. What a heap of rubbish! -
دودة لامبتون تنينية الطابع
رعب قوطي عتيق الطراز
ملحمة عنصرية مفككة عن عبء الرجل الابيض؛و نظرته الفوقية تجاه الأفارقة
لدرجة وصفهم بالنصف ادمي و ان مقتلهم كان ستوكر لا يعده قتلا بحق
كما ان بها نغمة التحقير للاناث ايضا
اعتقد ان دكتور احمد خالد توفيق اختارها ليوضح لنا الوجه الاخر لادباء القرن التاسع عشر؛ الوجه العنصري الفج؛و الذي تعرضنا له ايضا في جوهرة النجوم السبعة؛
و ايضا ليوضح لنا او الأعمال الاخيرة للأدباء قد لا تكون ابدا علي المستوى المعتاد لهم؛ و قد كتبها ستوكر بعد اصابته بجلطة ؛ و قبيل موته بعام لتكون روايته الاخيرة -
This is the 3rd Penguin Red classic book that I’ve read this month and the 2nd which is filled with racist and sexist messages. What a horrible way to end October!
To get my rage over with, let me take a moment and bitch a little about the racism. The “n” word is a trigger in society today but I am fully aware that at one point, it was nothing but a word (though obviously demeaning), so I would’ve happily let this book be what it is despite the fact that it uses the word “n” as commonly as we use “the.” But. (And this is big butt.) Not only are the character blatantly using it to relate to characteristics of savagery, barbarism, and slavery, the author/narrator himself is laughing at the black slave in the novel. It was not only offensive and utterly repulsive, but incredibly uncomfortable to watch the destruction of the “n” and witness the victory of white race.
To give an example, when a black man professes his love for Arabella, the following is the reaction:“Lady Arabella was not usually a humorous person, but no man or woman of the white race could have checked the laughter which rose spontaneously to her lips. The circumstances were too grotesque, the contrast too violent, for subdued mirth. The man a debased specimen of one of the most primitive races of the earth, and of an ugliness which was simply devilish; the woman of high degree, beautiful, accomplished.”
This was the voice of the narrator; I’ll save you the ridiculous response Arabella actually gives.
Furthermore, if that wasn’t bad enough, this book is also sexist in its portrayal of female characters. Some of the lines of this novel are cringingly bad in describing the nature of Arabella. I’ll be honest and say that there have been many times in my life when I’ve been frustrated with the opposite sex, but I don’t diminish their value as a human entirely. Here’s an example of the “toxicity” of a woman:“This one is a woman, with all a woman’s wit, combined with the heartlessness of a COCOTTE.”
And also this:“Now, Adam, it strikes me that, as we have to protect ourselves and others against feminine nature, our strong game will be to play our masculine against her feminine.”
Now that that’s out of the way, I would also like to add that the novel itself is generally just bad. It reads like a cheesy, corny, horror movie and is not at all redeemable by Stoker’s reputation of having authored
Dracula (and his reputation, for me at least, has clearly been demolished). The writing is mediocre, the characters are all irritating (because of obvious racist attitudes), and plot lines are all predicable.
In short: skip this piece of crap. -
This is my selection for the birthday challenge of the Dead Writers Society, as Stoker was born in November. Bram Stoker was only 64 when he wrote this, his final novel. Somehow it feels like the writing of a much older or less capable author.
The basic idea of the story is apparently built upon the legend of the Lambton worm. Now those of us who have read Tolkien will realize that worm = dragon, perhaps not self evident to all modern readers. So the title gives us a strong hint of what's coming. Unlike his earlier work, Stoker seems to have abandoned any attempt to be subtle. He signals blatantly what is ahead when his protagonist, Adam Salton, buys himself a mongoose to accompany him on his exploration of the English countryside. Being an Australian, invited to England by his great-uncle, he manages to step outside the English class system, which he displays by fixing a neighbour's carriage on the road.
The neighbour, Arabella March, is described as a sinuous beauty, always dressed in white. Adam encounters her on one of his neighbourhood walks and loses control of his pet mongoose, which attacks Ms. March in the same way it launches itself at snakes. There is no mystery here. The biggest surprise would be if Arabella wasn't supernaturally linked to the White Worm of legend. What is odd is that her strange connections seem to provide no material benefits; she is hunting for a wealthy husband to deal with her growing debts. The object of her hunt is the hereditary aristocrat in the vicinity, Edgar Caswell, who seems to be as loathsome as Arabella is. He is a narcissist before that psychiatric diagnosis is used. For some unexplained reason, he is desirous of dominating Lilla, a young woman on a nearby farm. Adam Salton is offended by this, as he has an eye on Lilla's cousin, Mimi, and feels protective of both of them. I ended up wondering how Adam et al. were going to deal with the White Worm, rather than being perplexed by the mysteriousness of the situation. It seems to me that a great deal more tension could have been created with a more judicious doling out of the clues.
Stoker makes good use of Biblical symbolism, naming his main character Adam and setting him up against a woman/snake. Shades of the Garden of Eden! Edgar Caswell gets his chance to fill Satan's role, providing a strange motivation for most of his incomprehensible actions. He gives his villain speech on the top of his tower during a powerful thunderstorm.
I found that misunderstanding science is nothing new, as Stoker has both Adam and Sir Nathaniel spouting some seriously inaccurate versions of evolution. A long lived creature can adapt in behaviour, but not decrease in size or change its basic intelligence. One wonders if Stoker believed this or if he just let his characters run amok. Also notable to me was the attitude to the one African in the book, that he was subhuman. It reminded me of
Tarzan of the Apes, which I read earlier this year and which was published the year after this one. -
This is indeed one strange little book, but I agree with no less a critic than H.P.Lovecraft when he says that the central idea--that of an ancient serpent who survives into the "modern" 19th century and exerts a malign influence on the living--is a good one. But the execution IS rather poorly done. This is not the masterpiece that is "Dracula," nor even the well-put-together read of "Jewel of Seven Stars." Stoker could have used a good copy editor on this book. For example, in one scene, Mimi, our heroine, thinks to herself that a nutzy character by the name of Caswall is mad, because of the way he has just spoken to her. However, there has been no dialogue or indication of Caswall saying anything up to that point. Numerous other inconsistencies abound, the net effect being one of almost non sequitur, dreamlike surrealism, which is perhaps Stoker's intent but is seemingly sloppy writing nonetheless. The descriptions of the English countryside are impossible to picture, so that you can never really get a mental view of the locale in which the story takes place. Also, the exact relationship between Lady Arabella and the Worm itself is vague at best, as is the significance of Mesmer's chest, and the "stare fights" that another reader refers to. The book certainly held my interest, short and compact as it is, but after all was said and done, I certainly wanted more in the way of explication and denouement. More scenes such as the one where Oolanga falls down the wormhole would've been nice. So what we have here is a frustrating read, but an engaging one, nonetheless.
-
Written one year before Stoker's death and soon after one of his strokes, this one is a weird novel. With a strange set of characters that get involved in hair-rising adventures and afterwords talk about them like nothing out of the ordinary happened. Edgar Caswall develops a maddening obsession for a kite meant to scare the pigeons in their annual migration from Africa, Adam Salton has a passion for snake-killing mongooses, Mimi Watford and her cousin Lilla, delicate young ladies are endowed with mesmeric powers and the traditional afternoon tea between neighbors ends up in hypnotic battles. There is also Arabella March, a beautiful, cold-blooded woman, always clad in thigh, white dresses who in fact is an antediluvian monster dwelling in the bowls of the earth.
Though we have a "love story" and a marriage there is a total lack of feeling or emotion between the characters.
The entire story is like a hallucination.
Not an easy read, nothing like Stoker's masterpiece "Dracula" ... yet an intriguing fabrication. -
This is the last book written by Bram Stoker one year before his death in 1912. And for a book that was written before WWI which has such a low rating (2.91) it's pretty striking. I thought people were overanalysing and overreacting over the fact that this book contains a lot of racist and sexist remarks. I thought if I put them aside I will find an interesting plot. Well, not exactly.
This book was on my shelves unread since 2009 so I decided this year to read it as part of my Halloween reads. Thankfully I finished it and thankfully it was short because this book was a stinker.
It has 3 main issues: Racism, Sexism, and Plot.
RACISM:
Oolanga is the African servant of one of the protagonists and he's described in pretty derogatory terms. He is described as an aboriginal savage twice, a savage 9 times, a nigger 27, including lots of descriptions like this one which is the very first:
"But the face of Oolanga, as his master at once called him, was pure pristine, unreformed, unsoftened savage, with inherent in it all the hideous possibilities of a lost, devil ridden child of the forest and the swamp—the lowest and most loathsome of all created things which were in some form ostensibly human."
There's more:
"The other negroid of the lowest type; hideously ugly, with the animal instincts developed as in the lowest brutes; cruel, wanting in all the mental and moral faculties—in fact, so brutal as to be hardly human"
and then there comes a phrase that explains many things:
"I have no particular desire to be seen so close to my own house in conversation with a-a-a nigger like you !” She had chosen the word of dishonour deliberately"
and Stoker himself of course was using this word of dishonour deliberately.
SEXISM:
Even in his (only) masterpiece, Dracula, women were depended on men and they were fragile, ethereal creatures. In here it's pretty obvious:
You know that women do not reason [...]"
"[...]our strong game will be to play our masculine against her feminine. Men can wait better than women.”
"But being of feminine species, she probably will over-reach herself"
He even makes a snide remark on the suffragettes who were fighting for their own human rights.
"This one is a woman, with all a woman’s wisdom and wit, combined with the heartlessness of a cocotte and the want of principle of a suffragette."
They didn't want principles, they wanted equal opportunities and equal treatment.
PLOT
So let's put the racism and the sexism that were in this book aside. Do we have a good plot? No
This plot had more holes than an emmental cheese.
The title says "The Lair of the White Worm", Lady Arabella wears white all the time, snakes are following her, she kills 2 mongooses (who eat snakes) one by shooting at it multiple times and one by tearing it apart, she has green eyes and she is pale, her walking is described as slithering. Do you need more clues to find out who's the white worm? Even a 6 year old will get it from the first 50 pages.
Then there's the subplot of hypnosis which I didn't understand the point of its inclusion in the book (to create an atmosphere?) As another
reviewer hilariously points out,"They stare at each other and throw mind bullets at each other or whatever until one person dies. It’s ludicrous and never explained what the point is".
The hypnotic kite that looks like a hawk to scare away the birds (again what was the point of this?)
Oolanga, what was his part in this novel apart from an excuse for Stoker to unravel his talent of racist descriptions?
And the chapters were so disjointed from each other, there was no easy flow between the change of the scenes, and what's more, the characters were doing things that were utterly stupid:
Lady Arabella instead of fighting for her survival she goes to sleep and she is exploded with dynamite by our hero Adam. She goes to sleep!! at the very critical moment of the book, she goes to sleep!! Adam befriends a Van Helsing-like Sir Nathaniel de Salis who exists in the plot only to solve the clues the reader already knows and then he disappears. Adam the protagonist comes to England from Australia because his rich uncle invited him. So because this uncle doesn't serve the plot enough he is absent from the very beginning when in other words his part is over (abruptly). The whole book feels like an unedited first draft. How it got published in the first place?
So in overall this book deserves its average rating which is 2.91.
#1 P.S. Give this book a miss unless you are a Bram Stoker completist.
#2 P.S. The drawings were all done by
Pamela Colman Smith, who illustrated the first edition of the novel in 1911. The only good thing in this book. -
Adam Salton, un joven australiano, acepta la invitación de su tío abuelo para viajar a Inglaterra, concretamente a su finca de Lesser Hill. Además de para conocerse mejor, el señor Salton desea que Adam conozca de primera mano las leyendas y ruinas locales, entre las que destaca la historia de una profundidad abisal en la que reside una criatura primigenia, el Gusano Blanco.
Dentro de la trama principal se encuentran algunas subtramas interesantes, que protagonizan Edgar Caswall, un vecino propietario de la finca de Castra Regis, frío y despiadado, y Lady Arabella March, tan bella como peligrosa, dueña de “La arboleda de Diana“. Otros personajes interesantes son Ulanga, el criado negro de Edgar, una especie de brujo africano, y las jóvenes primas Lilla y Mimi Watford, que entrarán en un conflicto de voluntades con el señor de Castra Regis.
‘La madriguera del Gusano Blanco’ (The Lair of the White Worm, 1911), fue la última novela que publicó el irlandés Bram Stoker, el famoso creador de Drácula. Pese a sus defectos, que los tiene, se trata de una muy buena novela del gótico tardío, bien escrita (o traducida), con algunos momentos realmente conseguidos. -
No había oído nada de esta novela y cayó por casualidad en mis manos, ha sido una grata sorpresa,una tram que me ha enganchado desde el principio. Una novela gótica ideal para estas fechas.
Muy recomendable. -
Micsoda cím! A fehér féreg fészke! Hármas alliteráció - Babits biztos beájulna! -, az ember csak meghallja, és kúszik fel a hátán a jeges borzongás. Kár, hogy maga a könyv csak egy vontatott viktoriánus horrorsztori hímsovinizmussal és rasszizmussal meghintve, ami a feszültségteremtés csimborasszójának azt tartja, hogy a szereplők hosszadalmasan elkezdik fejtegetni, éppen mi is történik, és amikor végre kezd izgalmas lenni, kijelentik, hogy késő van, tegyük el magunkat holnapra, majd reggeli után folytatjuk.
Ügyeletes jófiúnk, Adam Salton Ausztráliából Angliába teszi át székhelyét, mert talál magának egy nagybácsit, aki rá akarja hagyni a vagyonát. Ez a nagybácsi (idősebb Salton) gyakorlatilag egy háztartásban él bizonyos Sir Nathaniellel, és mindketten iszonyatosan kedvesek Adammal, aki pedig (mivel jófiú) maga is visszakedveskedi őket. Egy jobb életben (és még rosszabb regényben) ők innentől harmóniában élhetnének hármasban, mint egy jól működő nem hagyományos család, de erre nincs mód, mert vannak ugye szomszédok is a világon. Az egyik a fiatal Caswall afrikai szolgájával (aki ronda és gonosz, mint az öregördög, és súlyosbító körülményként sámán is), a másik pedig Lady Arabella, a kígyóasszony, akik elkezdik jól megvuduzni környezetüket, mindenféle okkult hátborzongást idézve ezzel elő. No most a Brit Nemesség Ősi Almanachjában feketén-fehéren le van írva, hogy vuduzni majdnem akkora modortalanság egy arisztokratától, mint leszavazni a Munkáspártra, szóval a fenn említett triász beveti magát – pláne mert Caswall vuduzásának célpontjai között vannak csinos hölgyek is, és ez felébreszti Adamban az óvó hímtigrist. És közben, az éj leple alatt, az erdő avarjában, ott tekereg a hattyúfehér rettenet.
Tényleg cuki könyvként regisztrálnám, ha nem idegesítene az a nagyvonalúság, ahogy Stoker a logikát kezeli. Mondok egy példát: Lady Arabella, aki már párszor meg akarta ölni hőseinket, meghívja őket teázni. Erre minden normális ember azt mondaná, hogy „Teázni? Elmész te a búsba, hát hülye vagyok én?” De Sir Nathaniel nem ilyen földhözragadt, ő kijelenti, hogy igenis el kell fogadni a meghívást, mert – figyeljétek az okfejtést! - a csatában az győz, aki megválasztja a csatateret, és azzal, hogy elfogadják a Lady Arabella kastélyát helyszínnek, azt sajátjukévá teszik, így máris olyan, mintha ők választottak volna csatateret. Szun Ce, hallod ezt? És te, Clausewitz? Stratégia mesterfokon! Stoker amúgy is kiváltképp zavaros jelenetekkel dolgozik, a szereplők viselkedése pedig időnként a „szürreális” jelző használatára jogosít, érthetetlen cselekedeteikkel nem csak a saját dolgukat nehezítik meg, hanem az olvasóét is. Antagonistáink közül Lady Arabella úgy-ahogy elmegy, de Caswall csak kisbaltával lett tessék-lássék módon kifaragva, a „jók” meg olyan émelyítőek, mint egy nutellával megkent, lépesmézzel töltött mályvacukor. Mindent összevetve egy kis irodalmi kalandozásra jó a kötet, legalább látjuk, Stoker nem csak a Drakulát írta, hanem mást is. Csak egy pöttyet elszállt a feje fölött az idő vasfoga.
Ui.: Ja, az tuti, hogy aki a hátsó borítón összefoglalta a cselekményt, az nem olvasta a könyvet. Talán inkább a könyvből készült filmből informálódott. -
Tratar de disfrutar de esta novela de Stoker sin conocer las peculiares circunstancias en las que fue escrita puede ser muy complicado. Porque siempre tienes a su famoso monstruo cerca, reflejando una sombra ante la que cualquier criatura siempre palidecerá. Y más en el caso en que nos ocupa, en donde las similitudes con el vampiro son bastante evidentes. La presencia de una entidad prehistórica que permanece oculta bajo tierras escocesas cuya leyenda crece entre los lugareños.
Pero claro, la presencia de esta criatura y sus extraordinarias habilidades no terminan de impactar del mismo modo en que lo hace nuestro querido conde. Quizás por lo irreal de la propuesta, en la que el comportamiento racional de este ente y su humanización no termina de funcionar. Es lo que pasa con este tipo de comparativas, que siempre son injustas.
Sin embargo, los valores que se encuentran escondidos en esta novela se encuentran en la eterna lucha entre el bien y el mal que tanto gusta a Stoker. Con la particularidad de personalizar este tipo de conflictos en la recurrente lucha de sexos, de inteligencias y de culturas. ¿Que es lo que pasa?, que en esta pequeña obra hay varias historias paralelas que uno no termina de disfrutar ante lo absurda de las propuestas. Desde un noble obsesionado con el vuelo ondulante de una cometa, cuyo movimiento no es aleatorio, a la extraña devoción entre un criado negro y una dama de alta alcurnia. Luchas mesméricas, herencias malditas, mangostas, cofres egipcios y así trama tras trama que te aleja de esa presencia tan potente de nuestro eterno enemigo.
Claro está que hay un detalle en esta novela que explicaría perfectamente esta locura de historia. Los efectos de las sustancias que Stoker consumía poco antes de su muerte, plasmando en la novela todas sus alucinaciones para dejarnos un legado extraño y sugerente que no será del gusto de cualquier lector.
Aún así, Stoker siempre fue un gran narrador y en esta delirante historia sabe mantener la curiosidad acerca de que es lo que se esconde bajo esas tierras. Una de esas extrañas novelas llenas de alegorías que te llena la cabeza de preguntas. -
The only good thing about the film adaption of this classic is that Amanda Donohue was in it.
-
*Warning may contain spoilers but really you shouldn't care...
I hated this book. With a quarter left I cracked it and gave into the ridiculousness of the writing, the characters, and the dialogue. I think Bram Stoker was drunk writing this one and I certainly wanted to be to get me through the end. Being the last book that Bram ever wrote, which was published a year before he died (of possible syphilis related causes), I thought that it would be one of his better ones. It wasn’t.
The story is drawn from two UK legends, ‘Lambton Worm’ about a giant worm like serpent that pillaged the area of Lambton and gets killed by a guy wearing spiky armour and ‘The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh’ which is about a princess who gets turned into a dragon but then some knight for whatever sick reason kisses the dragon which then turns back into a prince.
The book is about a young Australian that is called to England by his uncle to take over his estate. He gets wrapped up with his uncle and a retired English politician type character in a battle of good versus evil, mongooses versus snakes, a frigid gold digging snake witch, a creepy Alister Crowley like old man, and the racistly referred to West African savage.
This book says some pretty amazingly racist and sexist things actually. I guess you could say that they are said by the villains of the book so really it’s not Bram being a disgusting bigoted monster but the characters he created….or not. In reality this was at one time common thought and language. Truth be told, our grand and great grandparents were some serious racists. Listen to these lines:
“Let me give you a word of advice: If you have the slightest fault to find with that infernal nigger, shoot him at sight. A swelled-headed nigger, with a bee in his bonnet, is one of the worst difficulties in the world to deal with. So better make a clean job of it, and wipe him out at once!”
“But what about the law, Mr. Caswall?”
“Oh the law doesn’t concern itself much about dead niggers. A few more or less do not matter. To my mind it’s rather a relief.”
“I don’t love niggers any more than you do and I suppose one mustn’t be too particular where that sort of cleaning up is concerned.”
Needless to say the first character in the story to die, much like the poor red shirted crew member on Star Trek, was the black guy.
I found the young posh Australian character (Adam) funny as well. You can tell he’s Australian because of his extra-masculine abilities that he possesses that an ordinary English gentleman couldn’t possibly possess… such as fixing a ladies buggy:
“There is no one near who can mend a break like that.”
“I can.”
“You! You—why, it’s a workman’s job.”
“All right, I am a workman—though that is not the only sort of work I do. I am an Australian.”
Women are also portrayed to be very stupid and far beneath men, which sometimes backfires to make the men look worse. The more and more I read this book the more I felt Bram Stoker was a complete bastard:
“We may be sure that in the fight that is before us there will be no semblance of fair-play. Also that our unscrupulous opponent will not betray herself!”
“That is so—but being a feminine, she will probably over-reach herself. Now, Adam, it strikes me that, as we have to protect ourselves and others against feminine nature, our strong game will be to play our masculine against her feminine. Perhaps we had better sleep on it. She is a thing of the night; and the night may give us some ideas.”
Adam quickly falls for a girl who has a half-Burmese cousin who are both the prey of two of the weirdos mentioned above; the man obsessed with a kite and the snake witch obsessed with getting married so she can kill another husband or something that is, like so many things, not explained properly.
The ridiculousness hit full force when in one of the big battles at the end, Adam and his now wife confront the “White Worm” which the story then turns into a cartoon/ Benny Hill episode where his wife is a complete ditz. All it was missing was her stepping on a rake then a bucket of paint falling on her:
“The draught from the open door swayed the thin silk towards her, and in her fright, she tore down the curtain, which enveloped her from head to foot. Then she ran through the still open door, heedless of the fact that she could not see where she was going. Adam, followed by Sir Nathaniel, rushed forward and joined her—Adam catching his wife by the arm and holding her tight. It was well that he did so, for just before her lay the black orifice of the well-hold, which, of course, she could not see with the silk curtain round her head. The floor was extremely slipper; something like thick oil had been spilled where she had to pass; and close to the edge of the hole her feet shot from under her, and she stumbled forward towards the well-hole”
The villains try to kill (and at one time DO kill) the heroes and then invite them over for tea, send a letter saying everything is okay, or try and get them into a real estate deal the very next day, which the heroes naturally accept with no problem….then get attacked again which is no surprise to the reader. These are the stupidest people written into bad fiction I think I’ve ever read.
Another strange thing in this book is the telepathic mind battles that take place for no understandable reason. Have you seen any of the Scanner Cop movies? Well it’s that. They stare at each other and throw mind bullets at each other or whatever until one person dies. It’s ludicrous and never explained what the point is.
This entire story is ludicrous.
One star. -
When I started to read this I thought it was a parody of gothic books but I soon realised it's just badly conceived. After I read it I found out that Bram Stoker was really ill when he wrote it and I think that explains a lot. The mystery of the white worm was solved because characters accepted crazy theories as true based on no evidence at all and just about all of the characters did some bizarre things for no apparent reason. There were also some places where I don't think the plot really made sense but some passages were very confusing to read so maybe I just missed thing. The most horrfic thing about this book is the casual racism which Bram Stoker displayed. I am not being facetious about that. To Bram Stoker it was simply a fact that black people were totally and utterly inferior in every way to white people. In particular they were completely corrupt. He also used terms that are are considered unacceptable today (although they may not have been considered derogatory when he was writing the book of course). I gave it two stars rather than one because a plot strand which involved mongooses (yes really!) was so unintentionally funny that it still makes me laugh when I remember it. If you liked Dracula and want to read more of Bram Stoker's work I suggest you give this a miss. If you find ridiculous things funny then you may get some enjoyment from it as I did but otherwise this will be very disappointing.
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I love Dracula, but I found Lair of the White Worm to be boring, muddled, and extremely racist. I know Bram was from a very different time, but that's still no excuse to use the N word so freely and with such disdain and downright hatred. It was weird and disappointing. There is a very, very clear hatred for black people that comes through in this novel. I also had a hard time keeping some of the characters straight at times, because they (especially the honky dudes) seemed indistinguishable from each other. The bit with the possibly supernatural kite flying from the tower, and the old dude running an Egyptian totem up to it, was sort of interesting but ultimately fell flat. P.U.
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what can I say other than this book is full of red flags?
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So kann es einem ergehen, wenn man Bücher aufgrund des Covers kauft:
THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM ist ein Zugunglück von Roman, den ich nach 80 Seiten entnervt beiseite gelegt habe.
Dabei war ich an der pulpig-schönen Vintage Ausgabe von Arrow Books nicht vorbei gekommen und dann doppelt begeistert, als ich feststellte, dass Stokers Roman die Vorlage für Ken Russells mega schrillen Film BISS DER SCHLANGENFRAU ist, den ich großartig finde.
THE LAIR beginnt recht stimmungsvoll, wenn auch nicht gerade großartig geschrieben. Vom Autor des DRACULA hätte man mehr erwarten dürfen, aber gerade die glücklosen Kinder brauchen unsere Liebe und Zuneigung besonders, und so habe ich viele zum Glück kurze Kapitel lang an meinem Vorsatz festgehalten, diesen Roman zu mögen.
Mit fortschreitender Handlung läßt sich leider nicht mehr ausblenden, dass Stoker skizzenhaft spärlich verbundene Ereignisse aneinander reiht, die anfangs stimmungsvoll immer unmotivierter und zunehmend schlechter erzählt werden. Auch der erotische Subtext, dem nachzuspüren interessant ist, entschädigt für dieses Debakel nicht hinreichend und schließlich kippt mein Vorsatz in Unmut:
Wie soll ich einen Roman mögen, in dem nie erzählt und immer nur berichtet wird? Nie bin ich als Leser in "Echtzeit" dabei, wenn die spannenden Sachen passieren, sondern werde am Katzentisch mit den Berichten abgespeist, die Adam Salter dem Freund seines Großonkels abliefert. Nicht, dass es nicht des Sonderbarsten und Unheimlichen genug zu berichten gäbe, aber leider verpulvert Stoker durch seinen arbeitssparenden Kunstgriff das Potenzial bis zur erzählerischen Wirkungslosigkeit. Denn zu allem Übel sind die Berichte kurz und oft genug kryptisch. Zu einem erzählerischen Rhythmus findet der Text nicht und verspielt Seite um Seite den Charm, den er im Ansatz hatte. Und das Personal des Romans könnte lustloser nicht gestaltet sein (sofern man überhaupt von einer Gestaltung sprechen möchte).
Fazit: 1 1/2 Sterne für einen Roman, der nach einem ganz netten Anfang immer weiter runtergewirtschaftet wird, bis ich das Interesse daran, wie es weiter geht, völlig verloren habe. -
"Градината на злото" от Брам Стокър... но... Брам Стокър няма такъв роман. "The Garden of Evil" е версия на романа "Леговището на белия червей" (1911) издадена през 1966 г. и в сравнение с оригинала липсват цели 100 страници, а останалите са редактирани (за да има смисъл повествованието въпреки съкращенията)! Всъщност публикацията на съкратената версия на този роман е една от най-често срещаните грешки в книгоиздаването в цял свят. Пълното издание на романа се намира трудно дори на английски език. Нещо повече обаче, изглежда в книгата са включени и някои разкази. Един от тях е... Walpurgis Night... Брам Стокър няма и такъв разказ... това е редактирана и частично съкратена версия на разказа "Гостът на Дракула", изготвена от Питър Хейнинг и издадена за пръв път в сборника "Shades Of Dracula: The Uncollected Stories of Bram Stoker" (1982). Това е любимият ми автор, чувствам се тъжно, когато видя нещо подоно за писателите, които уважавам. Много тъжно. Не мога да си намеря място направо. Това е шантаво, но просто съм такъв. Иначе, прекрасна корица на Петър Станимиров.
Цели глави липсват спрямо оригинала! -
(This review was originally published in 2008 as
"the assiest book I have ever read" on the short-lived livejournal community "thisbookisass." Follow the link for an illustration and nicer formatting!)
After reporting to you on Dracula I decided that it might be fun to dig a little deeper into the respectable Victorian male id by reading Stoker's last novel, The Lair of the White Worm, in which an evil sexy woman who is really an enormous ancient snake lives in a moist, smelly, dark hole and MUST BE DESTROYED.
The depths of that id turn out to be even fouler than Lady Arabella's hole. (I'm not sorry! This book deserves obscene punning.)
THE WRITING: So, so bad. If you've read Dracula you know it's in an epistolary format. Everything is in limited third-person and tied together with a typewriter, not an omniscient narrative voice. This was a really good move on Stoker's part, because it turns out that he can't narrate worth beans. I'm sure the difference in quality also has something to do with the fact that he worked on Dracula for years and didn't revise The Lair of the White Worm at all, but seriously, my NaNoWriMo novel is narrated better than this book.
The pacing and tone and dialogue are so drab and carelessly written that even when the characters are talking about THE DOOM OF THE WORLD they might as well be discussing a slightly awkward social encounter.
There are also sentences that are so absurd that when you see them out of context you will think that Stoker was trying to be funny. But I've seen them in context, and ... I don't think so. For instance:Any unprejudiced person would accept the green lights to be the eyes of a great snake, such as tradition pointed to living in the well-hole.
Also:I never thought this fighting an antediluvian monster would be such a complicated job.
(Of course, that last sentence is followed by "This one is a woman!" Because male antediluvian monsters are a piece of cake. But you've got to watch out for those women's wiles. Luckily, "being feminine, she will probably over-reach herself. Now, Adam, as we have to protect ourselves and others against feminine nature, our strong game will be to play our masculine against her feminine." I promise, I was on the alert to discover what exactly Sir Nathaniel meant by that, but Stoker forgot to indicate which of the things Adam does to fight the White Worm are supposed to be particularly "masculine"--although he does have her femininity be her undoing at last.)
THE RACISM: The sexism in this book is so typically run-of-the-mill Victorian-man-frightened-of-women that I'm more amused by it than anything else. The racism, however, is just chilling. Racism, historical and current, is something I study and think about a lot, and I've read plenty of Victorian novels with nasty stereotypes (Thackeray, I'm looking at you), but something about Stoker's racism in this book just unnerved me.
Most of it is focused around the character Oolanga, a West African voodoo practitioner who arrives on the scene as the sinister landowner Edgar Caswall's servant. As you might expect, we get a lot of physiognomy by way of characterization in this novel (Caswall's "early Roman" features enhance his malignity), but Stoker treats us to this sort of analysis of Oolanga in every scene he's in. We start at "the face of Oolanga, as his master called him, was unreformed, unsoftened savage, and inherent in it were all the hideous possibilities of a lost, devil-ridden child of the forest and the swamp--the lowest of all created things that could be regarded in some form ostensibly human" and go downhill from there. When the narrator's not expounding on this theme, Adam, the book's hero, is complaining that the very sight of Oolanga makes his blood boil and he could almost shoot him on the spot.
Stoker uses the epithets "African," "Negro," and "nigger" interchangeably, and I was charitably hypothesizing that as a white Englishman in 1911, despite his American travels, he might not understand the implications of that last word. But I was proven wrong. Oolanga declares his love to the White Worm in her human form (yeah, Stoker went there), and to repulse him she responds:"I have no desire to be seen so close to my own house in conversation with a--a--a nigger like you!"
My best explanation is that Stoker deliberately created Oolanga in order to have a focal point for all of the racial hatred and fear he had ever felt. Really fucking disturbing.
She had chosen the word deliberately. She wished to meet his passion with another kind. Such would, at all events, help to keep him quiet. In the deep gloom she could not see the anger which suffused his face.
THE MONGOOSES: (Yes, that's the correct plural! I checked.) I think they appear in this book the way railway schedules and phonographs do in Dracula--as a result of Stoker's fascination with an ideal of competent, efficient, and knowledgeable manhood. Mongooses are Adam's way of dealing with a problem--snakes. He buys a number of them, first to kill off a population of snakes he notices when first arriving in the area (though it's not apparent that they actually pose any sort of problem), and then, when one reacts to the White Worm Lady as though she were a snake (and she shoots it), to help him investigate her. Stoker treats this absolutely seriously, but the image of a proper Edwardian gentleman strolling about with a mongoose on his shoulder (and later cuddling it when it's frightened by the White Worm) is pretty funny.
THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL: What this book is supposed to be about. We've already observed that the hero is actually a sexist, mongoose-toting Klansman. Meanwhile, if Lady Arabella--the White Worm's human version--hadn't been possessed by an ancient evil reptile as a child, her only fault would be wanting to marry a rich man so that she can pay off her late husband's debts. That doesn't sound so bad to me, but the way Stoker writes it, the evil of the White Worm is indistinguishable from the evil of a sexually-realized woman who knows what she wants and goes after it herself.
There isn't actually a fight against the White Worm itself. It is mostly dormant in the book, reeking and eating people who get dropped in its hole and occasionally erecting its shaft above the trees (see illustration) and peering at the surrounding countryside, until it gets exploded at the end in the only compelling scene in the whole book.
The real battles in this book are really weird. On one side are young women, Mimi and her cousin Lilla, and sometimes Adam, who is in love with Mimi. The two women live in Mercy Farm, the site of an old nunnery. On the other side are Lady Arabella and Edgar Caswall, and at one point Oolanga. Edgar is interested in Lilla, but it's unclear how. Every so often, he goes to her house for tea and ends up in a staring match with her. He is trying to hypnotize her; she is trying to resist. Mimi backs up Lilla, and Arabella backs up Edgar--even though she's jealous of Lilla, since Edgar is the rich guy she wants to marry, she thinks that supporting him here will win her his approval.
My best guess is that the battle of wills, in addition to symbolizing Good vs. Evil, is Stoker's surrogate for writing about sexual coercion. This explains Arabella's jealousy despite the fact that when Edgar wins the staring match, Lilla dies--and it's the only explanation I can think of for the way Stoker writes about Oolanga joining the struggle on Edgar and Arabella's side (Adam narrating):That combination of forces--the over-lord, the white woman, and the black man--would have cost some--probably all of them--their lives in the Southern States of America. To us it was simply horrible.
In 1911, a white man and woman employing a black man as a servant was normal. A ménage à trois involving a white man, a white woman, and a black man could well end in lynching. (And would be thought of as "horrible" by an educated white Englishman.)OTHER THINGS
: I haven't told you about are Edgar's evil kite, the Hitchcockian bird invasion, how Mimi being half-Burmese gives her magic eyes (super-resistant to hypnotism!), the especially stupid plot holes, how the White Worm inadvertently helps Adam discover a valuable deposit of clay, even more racist dreck about Oolanga, and the Rube-Goldberg-machine scenario by which Edgar and Arabella cause their own demise.
You can read the whole thing for free
here or at a number of other places online. I would have recommended that you do, if you're fascinated by utter trainwrecks of books, if it weren't for all that stuff about Oolanga. That just crosses the line. -
The Lair of the White worm- 2 stars
There is this extremely satisfying feeling reading “tales of old”. Even stories not written that long ago, and yet there is a world of difference. Take the “(The) Lair of the White Worm”. Published in 1911,and yet again I find myself fascinated . To get whirled into the British society that is so very different from how we act, behave and even speak today. Reading classics gives me an insight into the past, and I find that feeling so very charming. However, the past was not all light and proper use of grammar and Latin phrases. No. It also had a very dark side, and it’s something we still see to an extent today. Something horrible.
The Lair of the White Worm was probably the most racist story from Stoker. I tried while reading the story to say to myself that this was the norm. This was how man thought in this period of our history, but I have to be honest that behaviour they showed was by all means not acceptable. I simply cannot understand how entire societies could belittle people this much, simply for the fact of how they looked. It’s appalling. Distasteful.
What I did like was the fact that “The Lair of the White Worm” had much more going on than some of Stokers other work. There were new people introduced though out the story, there was a few changes in the scenery, and it had both internal dialogue and compelling discussing. It did take a bit to really pick up, and I found myself truly invested in the discovery of what exactly the White Worm was.
Read: 20/12/2019
1st rating: 2 stars
Genre/sub-genres: Horror/adventure/mystery
Cover: 1 star
POV: 3rd person- Multiple
Will I recommend: Yes and no. Some parts I enjoyed, and some parts made me so bloody angry. -
Christmas gift from my boyfriend
The Lair Of The White Worm was a confusing and flawed book that begins in dull conversation, features an entire town going insane because of birds and a kite, and ends in a giant explosion.
It was the written form of an Ed Wood movie -- trite dialogue, scenes randomly abutting each other in what I view to be the written form of stock footage usage, and a giant explosion at the end. Because really, how else were they going to end it? -
Градината на злото, излизал на български и под заглавието
Леговището на белия червей, е имал всички предварителни условия да се превърне в шедьовър:
- Повече от удачен избор на място за разгръщане на повествованието – няколко имения в централна Англия, разположени, както става ясно още от първите страници, в самото сърце на Мърсия (англосаксонско кралство, съществувало от VI до IX век.)
- Страховита легенда , около която гравитира сюжетът - за гигантски влечуги, обитавали въпросните земи, сведенията за които можели да се проследят до времената на римляните и келтите.
- Интересни герои: смел австралиец, завърнал се в старата родина, тайнствена лейди, около чиято особа витаят злокобни слухове, ексцентричен богаташ, последовател на Месмер, африканец с нездрав интерес към смъртта и вуду практиките…
Дотук чудесно, обаче Брам Стокър тотално е прецакал нещата. Макар и лесно четивна историята се оказа изключително разпиляна, наивна, бъкаща от недомислици и логически пукнатини. Разбира се, насладих се на две-три великолепни хорър-сцени, но те не успяха да спасят положението… (3/5)
Виж, ситуацията с разказите беше съвсем друга. Не успях да харесам само първия от шестте, включени в тома.
В долината на сенките (3/5) Някакви делириумни бълнувания на психично болен човек с (предполагам, щото не успях да ги хвана, а въпросните автори се споменават) намигания към творби на Хърбърт Уелс, Ръдиард Киплинг и Джон Бъниън, които въобще не ми харесаха. Любопитното за този разказ е, че е публикуван анонимно през 1907 и макар да се приписва на Стокър няма категорични доказателства.
Къщата на съдията, 1891 (5/5) Разкошен хорър разказ, експлоатиращ архетипа Лошото място. Вече съм го чел в
Майсторът на ковчези
Кошмарът на окървавените ръце, 1914 (5/5) Квалитетна история за престъпление и изкупление.
Как расте златото, 1892 (5/5) Още един разкошен разказ с отмъстителен призрак
Плъховете погребват бързо, 1914 (5/5) Брутална, задъхана история, развиваща се сред бунище в покрайнините на Париж, обиталище на т.нар. шифониеристи.
Валпургиева нощ, 1914 (5/5) Тази благина е позната под няколко имена, вкл. и като Гостът на Дракула, непубликувана част от романа, която е включена в изданието на Deja Book -
Дракула.
Сумарна оценка 4,4 -
It's a relief when you emerge from the book, utterly bewildered, wondering if you've missed the point or how it could be a classic, and then see a series of negative reviews for exactly the same reasons that troubled you. This is a bizarre, ugly, incoherent, frequently dull book reading sometimes like Stoker amalgamated two or three fragments from more interesting Gothic novels, and sometimes like he had a very specific end destination in mind and was going to hammer to fit in order to get there. The bits and pieces--Caswell's mesmeric attacks on Lilla, his kite obsession descent into madness, the menacing Worm, the pastoral soap opera of Arabella March trying to gold-dig her way into a wealthy spouse, the machinations of Caswell's servant Oolanga--never really talk to each other, and the reader is left to wonder which of these is going to emerge from the Darwinian struggle .
It's a testament to the story's surreal miasma and bent reality that Sir Nathaniel can seriously, out of nowhere, discuss the immense primordial Worm to Adam Salton as a serious topic, and that Arabella March is some sort of lizard person and Adam doesn't once seriously entertain the idea that his friend and confidante might be, perhaps, entirely cuckoo.
They then assert that the best way to protect Mimi is to marry her off, and keep her sequestered and in ignorance. Why is the Worm obsessed with Mimi? Why must Mimi be kept in ignorance? Why is the Worm, or Arabella anyways, helping Caswell to get Lilla by mesmeric attack? What does all this have to do with the giant kite and mystery chest of scientific instruments?
It would be funny in a camp sort of way if it weren't so appallingly dull.
Caswell's African servant Oolanga gets particularly short shrift. The depiction is cringeworthy to the extreme, full of unpleasant stereotype and assertions of decadence and savagery and ugliness. His entire presence is a non-event except for a stupid death that barely raises the stakes and is completely unmentioned by any character afterwards. That the supposed protagonists use now-outdated racial slurs--I had to look it up--and other prejudice makes the entire business entirely squalid.
Wikipedia indicates that the 28-chapter version is highly abridged. I cannot imagine what Stoker did with 40 chapters. -
I wanted to read more Stoker after enjoying Dracula and had heard of this one because of the film adaptation, so gave it a try.
It's not his best work. It was written shortly before his death and doesn't have the coherence that earlier works are reported to have. It's a very old style of writing and drags a lot, plus it is definitely not PC, although I usually give a pass to novels from this period.
The premise of the story is that an Australian, Adam Salter, is summoned to England by a great uncle who wishes to make him his heir. It's rather convoluted, but I neighbour believes a woman, Arabella, is a shape-changer and becomes a great white worm of legend. Adam gets a mongoose to deal with black snakes on the property and it attacks Arabella.
There is mesmerism in early form, obsession by the neighbour with a girl called Lilla Watford, and a murder of an unwanted suitor covered up. All pretty classic stuff of the era, including a spectacular conclusion.
I read an abridged copy which was just over 200 pages, and wonder how bad the original must have been. -
Utter rubbish. I'm surprised Bram Stoker wrote this. He must have been hard up for cash and in a hurry. It reads like a badly developed first draft of a preposterous idea. It's also disturbingly racist, even for the era.
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Das profundezas da Terra, uma criatura adormecida por mais de mil anos acorda do seu sono e espera pacientemente a hora certa para executar seus propósitos de destruição.
Começo de 1820, Adam Salton chega da Austrália a convite do tio para ver as propriedades que herdará na Inglaterra e vai morar com ele no Palácio de Lesser Hill.
Logo Adam faz amizade com o arqueólogo Nathaniel e começam a explorar as terras que antes foram habitadas pelos romanos e passam a crer que algo errado está acontecendo naquele lugar.
Isso fica mais evidente, quando conhecem lady Arabella ,uma linda viúva , porém empobrecida devido a morte do marido . Conhecem também a Edgar Caswall um jovem muito rico que acabara de chegar do exterior para morar em um castelo há muito tempo vazio .
Juntos Adam, Nathaniel e duas garotas locais , Lilla Watford e Mimi , irão se envolver em uma luta contra um homem que parece estar enlouquecendo e usa o jogo sujo do mesmerismo e uma mulher cuja beleza esconde um ser repugnante. Enfim uma verdadeira maratona de amor e destruição.
Há muitas similaridades com a ópera "A flauta mágica " de Mozart : As nuvens de pássaros que chegam sem explicação nas redondezas onde Adam mora é contrastado com um folheto com um pássaro que era destribuido como guia da ópera. No presente livro o negro Oolanga ,um Africano primitivo, tem interesse em lady Arabela, assim como na ópera um negro estrupa uma branca. Ambos o livro e a ópera têm uma cobra a ser derrotada , têm uma mulher vilã, castelos misteriosos e mulheres que vão para o inferno.
O livro escrito em 1911 foi criticado por racismo, assim como foi também Monteiro Lobato, o livro " E o vento levou " a qual eu concordo totalmente. Zero tolerância ao racismo.
O livro também sofre alguma crítica por algumas incoerências e situações inexplicáveis no texto. Vale a pena lembrar que esse seria o último livro de Bram Stoker , ele morreria um ano depois. Muitos falam que por essa época a sua saúde mental já estava debilitada.
Uma coisa que me chamou a atenção no Livro foram os duelos de hipnose , conhecidos como mesmerismo, entre lady Arabela, Mimi e Edgar Caswall.
No livro também vemos o duelo entre passado e presente . Aliás esse livro é uma ótima oportunidade para vermos que Stoker reconhecia que podemos trazer ou herdar grandes problemas do passado , mas podemos usar a tecnologia e o conhecimento do presente para destruí-los .
Muitos conhecem Bram Stoker somente como escritor do Drácula , na verdade ele escreveu 12 livros, vale a pena descobrir novas aventuras. Eu , apesar de algumas imperfeições , adorei o livro. -
A história começa enrolada num ambiente de lendas e mistérios. Mas ao longo da trama vai se perdendo e não entusiasma. A "serpente branca" representa a metamorfose do mal presenta em Lady Arebelle. Outra personagem que se destaca é o Oolonga, o negro que sempre acompanha Egar Cashaell.
Adam como personagem principal deve se destacar, mas não há nada que o faço como um heroí. Nem o seu amor por Mimi nos comove. Em geral é uma leitura morna, sem grandes surpresas. A típica luta entre o bem e o mal. -
“The Lair of the White Worm” is undoubtedly one of the most repulsive books I’ve ever read. I should have read the other Goodreads patrons reviews of this novel before I picked it up. They mostly agree with my assessment.
The very worst part of the book is the prominent role of Oolonga, an African slave brought to England in the service of the villain of the novel, Casewell. I’ve read other books where unfortunate, outdated prejudices leak into the narrative, but Bram Stoker harps on the evil, savage nature of Oolonga in a maniacal fashion.
The rest of the story is only slightly better. The narrative is nearly incoherent. There are long-winded histories and dull, one-dimensional characters. The motivations of the nefarious Casewell and Lady Arabella are incomprehensible and ever-shifting. There is an evil kite! It flies over the English countryside, spreading negative emotions. The interactions of the characters don’t make any sense. Take, for example, Lilla and Mimi. If you’re a nice British girl, and a man keeps showing up at your house and makes you feel ill and faint by practicing mind control on you without your consent, wouldn’t you stop answering the door when he stopped by? But no, they keep politely inviting him and his evil cronies in to tea. Also, when Adam decides that action must be taken against the white worm he starts to plan his method of attack. What is the first order of business? Marrying Mimi, of course. How could you possibly destroy a primordial evil creature without first marrying the women whom it is terrorizing? If they weren’t married, it would be very unseemly for Mimi to throw herself into Adam’s arms after he saves her.
There would be only one way to salvage this story, and that would be to turn it into some kind of over-the-top, D-level horror movie a la “Troll 2”. Stoker does everything he can to inspire such a movie. When Mimi is invited over for tea by the White Worm, the room begins inexplicably filling with smoke. Mimi reacts by running into a curtain, wrapping it around her head in her confusion and then blindly stumbling over to a bottomless pit. Luckily she is saved at the last moment by her hubby Adam. It’s like a scene from the Three Stooges.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Stoker was in on the joke. I finished this book because it was short and I was a little interested to see how the train wreck would end. It kept surpassing itself in awfulness. I think Stoker’s editor should have done him a favor and accidentally dropped the manuscript in a meat grinder. After this, I’ll never think of Bram Stoker in the same way. -
This is essentially a "penny dreadful" ... fun at the time to read, but lacking in a great deal of common sense.
The legend of a terrible beast that devastated the countryside is investigated by a young man and a historian. They discover that there may be more truth to the stories than they imagined.
I enjoy this style of story. It reminds me of the paperback adventures that I read of DOC SAVAGE as a child. There are plenty of thrills, creepy moments, nefarious villains, and a doozy of an ending.
The problem is that the characters consistently behave in ways that defy logic. A young woman is terrorized by one of the villains who attempts to use mesmerizing influence and is only saved at the last moment by her friends. Later, she allows him to come back ... twice. Another villain is observed despatching a victim in a very bloody display at a well ... then sends a letter to the observer apologizing for the inconvenience and what may have looked to be worse than it was. A villain breaks off stalking the heroes and sells them the property they need to access to solve a secret. Ah, yes, and let's not forget visitors who are attacked in a room and almost plummet to their doom ... only to sit down to tea with the perpetrator immediately afterward.
There are plenty of other examples.
There was also a villain suddenly besieged with a fit of madness. There's nothing wrong with that, but the writer stops the story to clearly define the type of madness in multiple paragraphs as if to prove that sufficient research was done to prove this could happen.
I understand that the writer suffered a stroke before finishing the work, so he may not have been in top performing capacity to edit the final version. The result is a quick, fun read, but with too many logical behavior flaws to ignore. -
Here is what I wrote about this book in my school exercise book in 1968:
"On Saturday I went into Woking and bought three paperbacks. One was called The Lair of the White Worm. It was written by Bram Stoker, writer of Dracula. It was about a snake, a white one, that is intelligent. It can change into human form and is evil."
To this my teacher, Mrs Graham, responded: "Why do you always read the same type of book David [sic]? Try some of Arthur Ransom [sic], Sir Walter Scott, D.K. Broster etc."
This is the same teacher who corrected my use of "playwright" to "play writer", was uncertain whether man had already landed on the Moon (this was in January 1968), and who, when I said that the phrase "knots per hour" in a Dr Doolittle book represented an acceleration, not a speed, told me I was wrong. Ah, primary school. It gets you out of the house, anyway.
Btw that 2-star rating is me being generous. Even aged 10 I could see the flaws in this novel. Hard to believe it was written by the same man who wrote Dracula.
