IRA #2 The Historian

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova


Protagonist- Anonymous Sixteen year old girl
Antagonist- there is someone who is trying to get rid of everyone who knows that Dracula is still alive. This antagonist is violent and brings about unexplained homicides.
Themes:
Victimization- everyone who knows or helps this girl with her research on Dracula, is getting killed, becoming weak, or is in danger. The librarian that helps the girl ends up dead in the library, but no one knows the cause. As her father tells more of the story, he is growing very weak and she is worried. The sixteen year old girl finds out that someone else has a copy of Dracula and is in danger.
Coincidence- the girl is starting to see a pattern with her life and Professor Rossi' depicted in his letter. Whenever someone is  getting closer to the truth about Dracula, they end up dead and nobody can figure out who the killer is or the next target.

Vocab:
peripatetic- walking or traveling about (81).
compunction- uneasiness or hesitation about an action (90).
pedantic- overly concerned (90).
innocuous- not interesting,  significant, or stimulant pallid, insipid (91).


Summary
Chapters 10-20


As the anonymous teenager balances schoolwork, traveling, and research on Dracula, she is getting into something that is even more scary than life itself. She keeps reading the letters and is finding out more from Professor Rossi's letters. She starts to have this obsession and will not stop searching. In order to get a hold of classified information, she impersonates a Professor at the University. She tries to look for Bram Stokers novel Dracula, but it is checked out. She really needs the book so she does everything she can to find out the name of the patron who has the book. While doing this, she notices a dark scary man who hasn't taken his eyes off her. When he asks her if she needs help with anything, she tries to lie and say that she wasn't looking for Dracula, but something else. Soon she finds out that the book has been checked out to a graduate student named Helen Rossi. The teenager finds the last name to be quite familiar. She sets up a meeting with the student, still impersonating a professor, and tells Helen that she might be in danger by holding onto that book. Unfortunately, the women doesn't believe her and thinks she's crazy. After talking with Helen, she finds out that Helen is Professor Rossi's illegitimate daughter from Romania. She is a History grad student hoping to publish research about Dracula before her father, therefore getting revenge for him leaving her mother with a child out of wedlock.

Saturday October 29, 2011


This book is getting really good. She finally learns more about the crimes of Dracula. When studying the history of the Carpathians, you don't realize that if you look at someone wrong even once, you are dead.   At the end of Professor Rossi's letters, she must rely on information from the library. I find it cool that the girl impersonates a professor and succeeds. This concludes that either she is a very good actor or the library faculty is really stupid. I feel really bad for this girl because every person who has helped her with her research is dead or going to be dead.
"I might for a second-- not knowing him-- have said he was dead" (130).  I have a feeling that because her father is becoming weaker by the minute he probably has cancer and is not going to live very long. Everything that is happening in the letters is happening to her and that's freaky.  The story keeps getting more interesting with the mystery of not knowing who is behind all these unexpected deaths. I really am curious about who is actually behind these murders. I have a hunch that its a scary guy who wears black, could be the same guy who was stalking her at the library. It could be the same guy who killed Rossi's friend according to his letters in 1931. However, that murder was mostly likely a vampire because of the teeth impressions in his neck. When the teenage girl meets Ms. Rossi, she figures out that she is Rossi's daughter and I know she can't be to blame for these murders because her only goal in life is to belittle her supposed father by publishing an article about Dracula's true existence. She didn't even realize her father disappeared from his office. Heck, she doesn't know anything about him, except his accomplishments and what he is currently working on. As I read more and more of this story, I hope I will find the answer of why someone would go to so much trouble to kill all these people. There is something that the sixteen year old is getting very close to that not only can endanger her life, but also the lives of others around her. I really hope that the girl and Ms. Rossi put their heads together and figure out what is going on. Is there a chance that Rossi maybe staged the kidnapping and he just fled to Romania to keep searching for Dracula's tomb or has he really disappeared? Who is the killer? Are my assumptions correct about the creepy guy in black?  I'm really looking forward to reading more of this because I want to answer my questions.

Recommendation: This is actually a really good book so far, but if you don't like slow starters and you can't bear to read a book that is more than 400 pages, then this book is not for you.