Bookmarked: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Hey y'all let's see what's up today! This month I have set quite the challenge for myself: Reading 7 books. Yes, you read that correctly, seven. I allowed my book club to vote on the lineup of 5 quick reads, and then I have 2 longer books that I am hoping to finish between each of these 5. Even if I don't finish all 7 I'm not going to be disappointed, but I would be ecstatic if I were able to finish them all. The first in this lineup from book club is this quick read from Robert Louis Stevenson. It's a classic, and though I love the theatre performance I have never actually read the book.
Summary
The tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde follows a lawyer by the name Gabriel John Utterson as he tries to cope with the strange occurrences surrounding his friend Dr. Henry Jekyll. He learns of Mr. Edward Hyde through his friend Mr. Ennfield, who watched Mr. Hyde trample a young girl and then pay off her family via a check for nearly 100 pounds (dollars for my US readers). Mr. Utterson realizes he knows the name of Hyde from a will that was given to him by Dr. Jekyll, in which all of Dr. Jekyll's assets are to be transferred to Mr. Hyde in the case of his death or disappearance. Mr. Utterson suspects foul play is afoot and ends up going way over his head into the world of Dr. Jekyll and his experiment.
Review
The only experience that I had going into this book was from the 1931 film, as well as the theatre performances of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which I quite enjoyed. This book was not very long, and I felt pretty comfortable pacing myself with it, though it could have easily been read in one sitting. Before I get into the review of the book itself, I wanted to talk about my specific pocket edition of the novel, because I've never seen this done in a book before. My version included a history of the piece, as well as 2 essays in regards to the novel and the author which I thought was really cool.
Getting into the novel itself, some of my favorite talking points were how the male characters interacted with one another. I find that in a lot of more modern pieces the male characters rarely rely on others or show a lot of emotions and that just wasn't the case with this novel or other novels that I've read from this era. The male characters openly express their emotions, they show genuine concern for one another, and most importantly they didn't hesitate to call one another out for what they considered to be unacceptable behavior.
Moving into the horror elements for this novel, they were mild, but well written. I found that I really liked the vague description of Mr. Hyde. He's described as looking deformed without any physical sign of deformations, and people that meet him just immediately get the feeling that they don't like him which reads as very uncanny valley to me. This description, however, leads into the body horror aspect of the novel in which we learn that Dr. Jekyll's physical body is changing to become Mr. Hyde and that's why he looks wrong, its because he is wrong.
Overall, I loved this novel. I'd recommend it to people who aren't horror fans, especially if they love classic media like this. If you want to grab your own copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde I'll link it here My next book that I'm going to be reading is The Edge of Sleep so keep an eye out for that! If you want to see more from me feel free to click the link below where you can find my other socials. Y'all take care, and thanks for stopping by!
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