While not the best work of British literature I have read, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, was definitely entertaining. As is most literature of this time and nature, the novel is dually purposed: that of a haunting story, and that of an intellectual dive into the duality of man.

The story is told by Mr. Utterson, a reputable lawyer and friend of Dr. Henry Jekyll. While on a customary walk with an old friend, Mr. Utterson hears the story of a villainous, evil man, one Edward Hyde. Mr. Utterson is shocked and upset to hear that Mr. Hyde not only has a key to Dr. Jekyll's quarters, but that he has recently been named the sole heir to that same friend through his will.

Due to a feeling of loyalty, Mr. Utterson sets to understanding the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and warning Dr. Jekyll of his uncertainty of the offensive man and his fear for his friend's safety and reputation. Along the way we are given the account of another friend of both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Utterson, one Dr. Lanyon, and then finally the confession of Dr. Jekyll himself. The narrative flows smoothly and it's not hard to follow who is speaking, since the chapters are adequately labeled.

I'm sure just about everyone knows the story, so it won't be a spoiler to say that Dr. Jekyll is, in fact, Mr. Hyde. But the book is worth a read for several reasons. One, it's easy-to-read British literature, and that doesn't come along too often, I've found. It's also a quick read (I don't know the specific number of pages, but it's definitely a novella (less than 100 pages) rather than a novel. And three, Stevenson seamlessly integrated a horror story (at least by 19th century standards) and a true look at humanity's sense of good vs. evil without sounding preachy or boring. His story took the itangible concept (that of man being both good and evil, internally speaking) and showed us what that could look like if that same concept was made physically visible. There are marked physical differences between Jekyll and Hyde, and that's no coincidence. Evil incarnate is much different looking from the average Joe, but that's because the average Joe is both good and evil. I was fascinated by the delicate (and sometimes not so delicate) changes Stevenson made to the character in order to emphasize the differences but, as the story progresses and you see just how far Dr. Jekyll falls, it's intriguing to note just how alike and close the characters become.

I won't give away any details because I think this is a book worth reading, but it just wasn't one of my favorites (probably because I'm not the biggest fan of scary stories). And because of that bias, I give it 3.5 out of 5. Note that this is the first time I've used a half star - this is because when I initially finished the book I gave it a 3, but now that I've had some time to digest and appreciate what Stevenson was trying to say, I want to give it a 4. So we'll settle with 3.5 and call it a day. Maybe I just have a soft spot for British literature (who would believe it, after 4 semesters' worth of reading the stuff?). ( )

Such a short story, I finished in within hours of starting today. It wasn’t at all what I expected as half the story is more of a narrative than action. It was an easy ride, would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t really know the story behind Jekyll and Hyde (I didn’t), aside from the fact one is evil and the other is good. Good creates evil. Evil takes over the world. That sort of thing. ( )

I really enjoyed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even though I knew how it ended. Actually, there are very few people in the book readers world who don’t know the ending. So, as I read it I looked at how the author was able to build up the suspense before he actually revealed the ending and the true identity of Hyde. It makes me wonder, back before this story became such a large part of pop-culture, what it must have been like to be one of the first to read the story, one of the first to find out its “surprising end” (I say surprising, because at one point it was, now not so much). Either way, I thought the author did a good job at building us up to the end, and showing the torment Jekyll was actually going through, with out actually showing us. I didn’t expect the story to be told though a third person’s eyes. I always assumed it was Jekyll who told the tale, so it was interesting to see it from a different perspective, because it makes the reader imagine exactly what was happening to Jekyll, from the descriptions of his peers.

I also enjoyed the level of description that went into setting some of the scenes in the other stories that are apart of this edition. It created such imagery, lovely may not me the word, but the level and exact imagery the author created, was amazing, it created very vivid images in my head, and I could almost hear the seas waves crashing, in his descriptions from The Merry Men. Here’s an example

“On such a night of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where the waters wheel and boil, where the waves joust together with the noise of an explosion, and the foam from towers and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye. Never before have I seen the Merry Men thus violent.”

One of my crisicims is that, some of the characters,talk using old English or Scotish Slang, so especially for Thrawn Janet, the entire story is written like this,

“Fair-guid-een nor Fair-guid-day; but when she buckled to, she had a tounge, to deave the miller. Up she got an’ there wasnae an auld story in Ba’weary but she gart somebody lowp for it that day; they couldnae say ae thing but she could say twa to it”

So that made it a little hard to get through, it added some culture to the book, I give it that, but it also took me longer then normal, to read.

Overall, the writing was elegant and vivid a style which captures you and bring you into the stories. My two favourites are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Markheim. It was a very different and interesting twist of a story, but I don’t want to give much away, read the story, you won’t regret it.

Review also found at my book review blog
http://juliebooks.blogspot.com/2009/0... ( )

A quick and compelling read - I really enjoyed reading it, despite knowing most of the plot points through general knowledge anyway. ( )

Although an interesting read, the story did not age well with time due its popularity and how familiar many are to the ending twist. One of the most well known stories in English literature, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" delves into the duality of man - of good and evil - in a fascinating, hocus-pocus sort of way. ( )