THE BLOOD COUNTESS

A portrait of Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory follows her real-life sixteenth-century reign of torture and murder

Codrescu, journalist, poet, NPR commentator and filmmaker, has now written an ambitious first novel based on the fantastically grotesque character of a real-life Hungarian aristocrat. The novel tells two stories: the third-person tale of 16th-century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a magisterial, beautiful and terrifying woman who bathes in the blood of virgin girls to preserve her youth; and the first-person narrative of her distant descendant, a journalist returning to his native Hungary to confront his feelings of guilt amid the sociopolitical turmoil of post-Soviet Central Europe. Told in alternating chapters or passages, the two stories merge violently near novel's end in a scene of feverish melodrama. Europe's social, political, intellectual and religious histories are skillfully interwoven with the more slippery threads of magic and myth in this intimate account of Countess Bathory's bizarre and sadistic obsessions, resulting in a neo-gothic tale as revealing as it is disarmingly horrific. Moving forward at a quick clip against a detailed period backdrop, the language graphically depicts erotic bodily functions and acts of physical torture while drawing a rich psychological portrait of a precocious and insatiably curious girl who evolves into a figure of monstrous complexity, at once insightful and manipulative, erudite yet pathologically superstitious, part psychotic and part seeker. Finally, Elizabeth becomes pure literary symbol, a ghostly figure "from whose ashes has risen the modern world and all its horrors." That is an enormous burden for any character to bear, and Codrescu is less persuasive in connecting his journalist's interpretations to his fable-like reconstruction of Elizabeth's life. Fortunately, the bulk of the narrative concerns the blood-soaked realm of the countess, conjuring a historically rooted nightmare that is hard to resist. 150,000 first printing; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; audio rights to S&S Audio; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The fact that the author of this disturbing novel is a National Public Radio correspondent and a writer of considerable experience will create demand. How will readers react? That depends on whether they enjoy pages and pages of unrelenting cruelty and can overlook a big drawback in execution--that the two story lines, which are intended to link past and present, don't. Codrescu parallels a true story from the sixteenth century, about the bizarre Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, who was reputed to have murdered 650 virgins in order to bathe in their blood, with the fictitious story of Hungarian American Drake Bathory-Kereshtur, a descendant of the countess, who fled Hungary in 1956 and was recently sent back to his homeland by the newspaper he works for to cover its emergence from behind the iron curtain. Drake relates his tale to a judge in New York, and it takes the form of a confession in which he reveals his involvement in a murder and admits to the dark-soul legacy of his horrible ancestor, from which he can't seem to escape. The past story is simply gruesome, the present-day story has the ring of filler to give this novel publishable length. People will be asking for the book, though, so order as demand dictates. Brad Hooper

It is a little chilling to realize that Codrescu is related to Countess Elizabeth Barthory, the "heroine" of his first novel, who reputedly bathed in the blood of slaughtered virgins to recapture her youthfulness. Expect the author, a poet, National Public Radio announcer, and distinguished essayist (whose A Hole in the Flag was one of LJ's Best Books of 1991), to give this 16th-century horror story a literary twist.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.