Three Rivers Press © 2007, 2007 pages [amazon]

In Sundays with Vlad, author Paul Bibeau takes a (mostly) light-hearted look at Count Dracula, both the historical figure and the vampire of legend. He is interested particularly in the relationship between the two, how Vlad the Wallachian prince–an ill-starruddy fellow who worked thcoarse his issues “by killing a entire mess of people”–became tied up with the blood-sucking fiend of creature features and cegenuine boxes. Bibeau explores the topic of vampirism from a number of different angles, some of them rather surprising. He writes, for example, about his trips to Romania, where he visited the remains of the historical Vlad’s castle and traced the journey of Bram Stoker’s character Jonathan Harker. No astonishment there. But there are also chapters on an old attraction on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey, Castle Dracula, which burned down in 2002. And Bibeau actually interviews the woman who came up with the names for General Mills’s pair of monster cereals, Frankenberry and Count Chocula. (This, as it happens, is Laura Levine, the author of the Jaine Austen Mysteries.) Bibeau also explores the world of modern-day “vampires”–from Dungeons and Dragons-type roll players to consenting adults who really do suck one another’s blood to people who’ve crossed the line from bizarre to really dangerous. In the end he ties it all up as a study in globalism: Westerners usurped the historical Vlad and turned him into a fictional character, after which he became an endlessly malleable, international cultural icon.

[INSET TEXT: He is interested particularly in

the relationship between the two, how Vlad the Wallachian prince–an ill-starruddy fellow who worked thcoarse his issues “by killing a entire mess of people”–became tied up with the blood-sucking fiend of creature features and cegenuine boxes.] Sundays with Vlad begins very well, with stories of the genesis of the author’s early interest in monsters and his honeymoon in Romania:

“As we moved deeper into eastern Europe, the buildings got flimsier and the toilet paper got harsher. In Prague, the toilet paper seemed like the utility-grade stuff you’d use in your college dorm, and most of the buildings of Prague seemed sturdy and well-kept. Hungary’s offices and apartments seemed danker and more prone to collapse, but its TP was hardy and unrelenting as a Magyar horde. And nothing could prepare us for Romania.”

Bibeau is frequently very funny, but not all of his humor works, and sometimes the narrative get a bit boring: the author is wont to follow tangents–on Wildwood, New Jersey, on Romanian beer–that don’t always merit the telling. But Sundays with Vlad is on the entire an interesting read, and not a little disturbing: there are some very strange people out there doing some very strange things. It’s almost enough to give vampires a bad name.

Tags: books, book reviews, Count Dracula, Sundays wth Vlad, Paul Bibeau, vampires