RELUCTANT IMMORTALS BY GWENDOLYN KISTE

14/6/2022

When Dracula asks, “You’re not the nice girl you pretend to be, are you, Lucy?” and Kiste’s heroine responds, “Who wants to be a nice girl anyhow?” the reader is certain to cheer.

Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09VXBH2DD
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Titan Books (14 Nov. 2022)

Book Review by Rebecca Rowland)

The first line of Reluctant Immortals reads, “It’s almost sundown in Los Angeles, and Dracula’s ashes won’t shut up.” Herein lies the chief conflict of Gwendolyn Kiste’s newest delight: her protagonist, a resurrected Lucy Westenra from Bram Stoker’s classic tale, accompanied by a similarly revived Bertha Mason, fresh from Thornfield’s destruction in Jane Eyre, are living in the late 1960s California, and the men—or better stated, monsters—who devoured them in their human lives are back and in pursuit.

Of course, if you paid attention during Stoker’s rendition, you might wonder how Lucy could be walking around counterculture America after turning into a vampire, then staked and beheaded by Van Helsing and her former suitors. “There are tales about Rochester and Dracula, books and movies, ones where Bee and I have been mostly written out, deleted from our own story, our own lives. Every time I turn around, it seems there’s another version of Dracula, another casting call for nubile young women, corseted and blushing and breathless for him. He’s become an unlikely hero, a bloodsucking James Bond, and I’ve become less than a footnote. The disposable victim who should have known better.” In Reluctant Immortals, one of Stoker’s discarded players takes center stage, and she proves to be more than worthy, balancing quick wit and keen survival instinct with a deadly hunger always simmering quietly just beneath the surface: “When he looks at me, he sees what everyone else does: a perfectly fine young lady, red curls in her hair, red rouge on her cheeks. Never mind the dirt beneath her fingernails and the teeth that sharpen if you catch her on a bad night.”

When the story opens, however, it is Lucy’s fastidious guarding of Dracula’s ashes that comprises most of her time, protecting both herself and the world from her maker’s destructive force. She isn’t alone: luckily, she previously had encountered another character adrift from Gothic’s heyday and the two formed an instant friendship. “In all the movies about [Bertha Mason’s] life, she’s no more than an extra locked away in a flimsy attic. She gets a few meager frames of screen time before a fire gobbles her up in the third act. She’s ash; she’s nothing; she’s an obstacle to overcome. She has to die so that Rochester and his new wife can live.” If Lucy’s character gets a spit and polish in Kiste’s reimagining, Bertha’s receives a full simonizing. Bertha, or Bee, is the perfect complement to hypervigilant Lucy, and together, when an unlucky series of events sends them speeding north toward San Francisco, they transform into a powerhouse duo, picking up new friends from 1960s touchstones (the Vietnam War, the hippie movement) along with ones from their old haunts (Renfield and Jane Eyre herself) along the way. While Lucy and Bee begin their adventure fighting the demons that pursue them, they soon recognize that Dracula and Rochester will never stop preying upon women in general—“We’re interchangeable to them, featureless as a fistful of clay, disposable as a leaky bag of garbage”— and they must save those new friends from sharing their unfortunate fate.

Those acquainted with the classics from Stoker and Brontë will savor this story; the author coyly places Easter eggs for bibliophiles to relish. However, even if the reader is not familiar with the original source material, Immortals serves new gothic atmosphere along with well-crafted wry humor. When Dracula’s habits result in an untidy tableau at Rochester’s modern mansion adjacent to the Golden Gate Bridge, the latter “just shakes his head. ‘Look what’s become of this place.’ Dracula glances around, seemingly pleased with himself. ‘I’d call it an improvement.’ ‘I’d call it a blight on property values.’ Rochester sneers.” Sly winks to the Western canon source material, including a banter over Lucy’s three suitors in Stoker’s novel, twinkle like merry holiday lights throughout the story.

Kiste’s 2019 precursor to her protagonist’s revival, “The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary),” set the stage for her newest offering. Her Pretty Marys All in a Row wove well-known characters from popular culture into a chilling urban fantasy; The Rust Maidens danced joyfully between historical fiction and literary horror. Each of these entries added a rung on the ladder to Reluctant Immortals, a novel where the author is in top-notch form. When Dracula asks, “You’re not the nice girl you pretend to be, are you, Lucy?” and Kiste’s heroine responds, “Who wants to be a nice girl anyhow?” the reader is certain to cheer.

Reluctant Immortals
by Gwendolyn Kiste

For fans of Mexican Gothic, a harrowing, sultry horror novel about the forgotten women in Dracula and Jane Eyre as they combat the toxic men intent on destroying their lives.

Los Angeles, 1967. Lucy Westenra and Bertha Mason – the forgotten women in Dracula and Jane Eyre – have been existing as undead immortals for centuries, unable to die and still tormented by the monsters that made them.

Lucy has long fought against Dracula’s intoxicating thrall, refusing his charismatic darkness and her ensuing appetite for blood. Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic, is still pursued from afar by Mr Rochester, who wants to add her to his collection of devoted female followers.

Then Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in San Francisco. To finally write their own story, Lucy and Bertha must boldly reclaim their stories from the men who tried to erase them in this harrowing gothic tale of love, betrayal and coercion.