Although it’s been a while since I read Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, Renfield is one of those hard-to-forget minor characters. R.M. Renfield was, in the Stoker novel, an inmate at an asylum run by Dr. John Seward. Often portrayed as a small, rather mousey man in the various film versions, Stoker’s original Renfield had “great physical strength” and “sanguine temperament.”
In Renfield, Barbara Hambly’s new novel, she follows Stoker’s lead and describes Ryland M. Renfield as a large, powerful man confined to the asylum by his dastardly in-laws. Just as in the original, Renfield traps and eats a variety of insects and vermin. In his mind, as we see through his notes and letters to his wife, he is absorbing the “life force” of the insects for strength. In the beginning of both versions, although Renfield is not a vampire, he seems to have a powerful psychic connection to Dracula.
Hambly follows Stoker’s lead again in telling the tale through the letters and journals of the various main characters. While the tale is mostly Renfield’s point of view, she also takes us into Dr. Seward’s POV through his journal. This switching around can be confusing or annoying if you like more straightforward narratives. As a reader, I find it interesting to watch the pieces of a story come together from different points of view. As a writer, I understand how difficult it can be to make all those pieces fit — especially using a story so well-known as the tale of Count Dracula.
In any retelling/reworking of a familiar story, the reader wants fresh insight into that story. We want the behind-the-scenes, the stuff that happened off camera, the details that the original story omitted. The writer takes a risk, too, because familiar tales often become sacrosanct, and fans don’t like it when the writer strays too far from the original. Hambly succeeds admirably here by filling in a workable and logical background for Renfield as well as a deeper look into Dr. Seward’s psyche in all of his roles. Hambly creates a background for Renfield as a self-made man, having made a fortune in India, and shows us how he dotes on his wife and daughter. In both stories, Seward is not only the director at the asylum, he is in love with Lucy Westenra (who becomes Dracula’s victim); he is a friend of Arthur Holmwood, Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris; he was a student of Dr. Van Helsing; and, with the others, he hunts down Dracula to keep him from taking Mina, Jonathan’s wife.
As with the original story, this is a gothic tale of humans and monsters at odds with each other, but Hambly ably shows the dark side of regular human conflict as well. For example, she gives us Renfield’s mother-in-law, a sour woman who never approved of her daughter’s marriage, as she believed her daughter married beneath her station and class.
Several novels in recent years have used the approach of telling a familiar story through the eyes of an entirely different, often minor, character. Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin was one of the best of these, retelling the story of Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego from the point of view of one of the household maids. Not as well done but nevertheless an intriguing take on Frankenstein, Theodore Roszak’s The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein tells that story from the point of view of the young woman who was the ward of Victor Frankenstein’s father and who was to become Victor’s ill-fated wife.
Hambly is a prolific author of science fiction and fantasy novels, but she’s probably best known for her excellent Benjamin January mystery series set in New Orleans in the 1830s. She has a gift for creating believable, sympathetic characters and for weaving intricate plots. She’s also had experience in using characters created by others to great advantage, as she has authored several Star Trek and Star Wars novels. Renfield is the result, she indicates on her Web site, from ideas originally envisioned by her husband, writer George Alec Effinger, who died before he could further develop the work.
Recently, after rereading the original Dracula, Powells.com critic Doug Brown wrote that it “has a dark horror tone from the first page, because we all know who Dracula is.” He adds that he would love to be able to read it without knowing that, so he could fully appreciate the way the story builds into a “full-blown gothic horror novel.” In a way, I agree with Brown. Reading Renfield as a gothic horror novel without my preconceived notions of vampires might make it more powerful. Still, Renfield is definitely recommended for any fan of the original novel, and it should be just as appealing to those interested in a well-told gothic tale.
This article appears in Nov 29 – Dec 5, 2006.
