There are forgotten characters in all of literature, or maybe minor characters who had impact on the story in which they appear, but are then cast off after their purpose of driving the plot has been served. One might even say they become an afterthought. In Gwendolyn Kiste’s Reluctant Immortals, two of those kinds of characters get the spotlight: Lucy Westenra (one of Count Dracula’s first victims) and Bertha Mason, the little known first wife of Jane Eyre’s husband, Edward Rochester. Lucy and Bee (as Bertha has re-christened herself) are alive, and if not well, surviving, in 1960s California. Their torturers(?). Murderers(?) are still looming like a black cloud over their “lives.”
Reluctant Immortals is a historical horror novel that looks at two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, Bertha and Lucy, who are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles in 1967 when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
Combining elements of historical and gothic fiction with a modern perspective, in a tale of love and betrayal and coercion, Reluctant Immortals is the lyrical and harrowing journey of two women from classic literature as they bravely claim their own destiny in a man’s world.
Lucy and Bee are surviving with the barest of means in California after having fled Europe. They live in a ramshackle mansion, have a beaten-up Buick and go to the movies every night. Fortunately, they’ve grown friendly with the owner of the drive-in movie theater which gives them a nightly distraction from the darkness through which they’ve suffered. Lucy is still a vampire and in Kiste’s world, she can be killed and return to the land of the living. Lucy is also lugging around urns containing Dracula’s ashes. The Master still whispers to her, tortures her mentally, and has some kind of hold on Lucy. Somehow, Bee has become immortal as well. She also hears Edward Rochester whispering to her.
Dracula is trying to reestablish his physical form in the world and Lucy fights at each turn to prevent this from happening. Along the way, Lucy and Bee meet up with some people who very much represent the late 60s flower power mindset whilst trying to finally break free from their tormentors.
I came to this book a fan of Kiste’s Rust Maidens. Having read the original Dracula and consuming various media adaptations of the Vampire, I had some familiarity with Lucy. I knew she was a minor character. As for Bee…I’ve tried to read books by the Brontës and … I’ll just say they did not mesh with my reading sensibilities. (Wuthering Heights along with James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man were the books I was required to read in college that I hated the most). Which is to say that I had zero knowledge or connection to the character of Bee, so the fact that Lucy was the main character worked in my favor.
The book is very much about women who are victimized by powerful, charming, sadistic men and how these women fight to get their selfhood back. They live with a trauma that has changed and shaped them profoundly, but they still eke out an agency for themselves. I found Lucy to be a magnetic protagonist, especially since she told the story from her first-person point of view. She was convincing in her struggle to overcome the mental and spiritual chains in which Dracula kept her tied and wrapped. What I found fascinating was that Bee and Lucy were living together for the better part of the 20th century, yet they still kept their stories of mental and physical torture secret from each other. They lived their lives day-to-day seemingly in an almost-Bohemian lifestyle.
I found Reluctant Immortals to be a compulsive read, I consumed it over the course of a couple of days. Kiste brought the novel to a great climax and conclusion, with an inventive take on how Lucy is able to return to the land of the living. Of course a novel featuring side-characters from Dracula and Jane Eyre wouldn’t be complete if the main characters from those novels didn’t feature at some point. Dracula, I’ve already mentioned. Jane shows up and I’ll just say things don’t get easier for Bee and Lucy with her around. Jane’s complications were just short of annoying and served as another challenge for Lucy to overcome, essentially showing how victimized women can sometimes be less helpful to other victimized women than one would hope.
The premise was intriguing and the execution of the themes intertwined with brisk plotting made for a enjoyable read. Where I would have liked a little more background/explanation was just how Rochester and Bee became immortal. There’s a mild reference to what was keeping them alive, but I would have appreciated a paragraph explaining it in more detail. That said, Kiste’s story is more concerned with the characters at the forefront of the novel and how they deal with the trauma and abuse and can forge a strength to deal with those terrors and friendship in a shared situation with those terrors.
© 2023 Rob H. Bedford
Recommended.
Trade Paperback | 320 pages
Saga Press | August 2022
Excerpt: https://tornightfire.com/introducing-gwendolyn-kistes-reluctant-immortals/
Author Website: https://www.gwendolynkiste.com | Twitter: @GwendolynKiste
Review copy courtesy of author giveaway via goodreads
