Horror Annotation

Stoker's Wilde

by Steven Hopstaken & Melissa Prusi

Synopsis
Supernatural monsters are attacking people in Victorian England under the direction of a mysterious figure known only as the Black Bishop. After teaming up to defeat a werewolf in their native Ireland, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde find their lives intertwined and have to overcome their difficult past and widely different personalities to save their friends and put an end to the Black Bishop's evil plan.

Characteristics that fit into Horror

• Pacing: The pace is generally slow, except for the action scenes retold within the diary or journal entries that can be exciting, which allows the growing sense of unease to permeate the action. As the narration is through epistolary style, the "writers" of the diaries, letters, or journals have the time to craft their narration and do so with care, taking their time to draw us in to what happened to them. Then the action scenes burst in, making us uneasy.
• Characterization: The two main characters are studies in opposites, with Stoker filling the haunted individual characterization, as we slowly learn there's something about him tying him to the supernatural. Wilde's character is somewhat unique in horror, as I would typify him as a happy-go-lucky character and this helps to juxtapose Stoker's staid and tragic personality.
• Storyline: The plot revolves around the growing unveiling of the presence of monsters in the midst of the characters' lives. Since there is a werewolf in the opening "chapters," we are set up to believe any kind of monster can then appear. The struggle for our heroes is to battle these monsters and save society from the darkness.
• Tone/Mood: The tone throughout is unsettling. From the first chapter in which our heroes battle a werewolf, there is a sense of dread and that something else could happen at any time.This builds with each encounter with a new character, as we're never sure who or what they may be.
• Style/Language: Told in an epistolary style through diary entries, letters, and journal entries, the novel evokes Bram Stoker's own "Dracula" from 1897. The language is formal Victorian English in many ways, with Oscar Wilde's flamboyant style and Stoker's more staid writing battling each other even as the two conflict. Other missives enter the narration, all set in the type of writing one would expect (i.e., audio interview transcriptions, telegrams). 
• Setting/Frame: The setting is Victorian Britain, a society sufficiently "advanced" to generally scoff at the idea of supernatural monsters, but also sufficiently (for us) historical where we can believe it would happen there. The dark and foggy streets of London allow a situation where anything can be hiding just beyond what the characters can see. The frame of the novel is the letters, diary and journal entries, and other missives in which we get first-person style narrations, making everything more personal and having us wonder when the entries will stop because the writer finally met his or her end.

Read-a-likes

• "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
• "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde
• "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" by Mary Shelley
• "Stoker's Manuscript" by Royce Prouty
• "Of Irish Blood" by Mary Pat Kelly
• "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice

Personal Note

Bram Stoker's "Dracula" was an inspiration for me in writing my own novel and this story was an interesting blend of actual and literary history. The hints and nods at both Stoker's and Wilde's writings are well done without being pervasive and distracting.