Vlad

VLAD is a modern sequel to the Dracula legend that feels oddly anemic. Written by the legendary Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, the novel seems more like a novella with lots of setup and a plot that ends as quickly as it begins. Robert Fass resists the urge to channel Bela Lugosi, even though the images conjured up resemble him. His deep, rich voice is hypnotic, just like the vampire himself. Fuentes finished the book shortly before his death, and one wonders if he'd planned to delve deeper into the story of Dracula moving his home to Mexico City in search of fresh prey. Fass's calm, controlled voice adds to the deliberate creepiness of the work. M.S. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

May 21, 2012
In this short novel, Fuentes (1928–2012) follows the pattern of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but infuses the story with a modern sensibility and vivid imagery: a bedroom filled with eerily identical dolls all dressed in pink; a flock of bats that resemble monstrous winged rats, with “filthy, long, hairy ears.” In place of Stoker’s Jonathan Harker, Fuentes has lawyer Yves Navarro, devoted to his beautiful wife, Asunción, and young daughter, Magdalena. Navarro makes a house call to the title character, a mysterious and wealthy new resident in overcrowded and somewhat lawless Mexico City. When Yves sets out for his appointment one dark and stormy night, the door to Vlad’s elegant new home (procured by Asunción, a real estate agent) is answered by a hunchback servant, and the vampire even uses the classic Dracula line, “I never drink... wine.” Navarro, however, does lose consciousness, and wakes knowing neither where he is nor how he got there. By the time Navarro realizes the danger around him, he’s already in too deep. A deliciously barbed bagatelle from a fiction master, with perhaps a strain of allegory for a world devoured by rapaciousness.

September 24, 2012
Narrator Robert Fass’s crisp narration enhances this audio edition of Fuentes’s riff on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in which the undead eponymous antihero travels to Mexico City for blood (having drained all of Europe’s supply). As in the original, the first-person narration is by a young attorney—one of many parallel plot developments that will bemuse Stoker fans. The Mexican setting calls for convincing Spanish accents, which Fass ably handles. He also demonstrates versatility in creating unique voices for the book’s many characters. As with other fantastic stories, listeners will only suspend disbelief if the story’s everyday elements are convincing. And Fass’s matter-of-fact delivery of passages such as the description of Navarro’s breakfast routine, lulls listeners into imagining that the supernatural elements are fully believable. A must for Dracula fans. A Dalkey Archive hardcover.