Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

From the book:

DR Henry Jekyll’s friends are horrified by his acquaintance with the vile and villainous Edward Hyde. Jekyll seems unable and unwilling to escape the clutches of this man, whose crimes and appetites become ever more unspeakable. But what terrible secret gives Hyde his power?

My two cents worth:

I’VE never had an interest in reading classics. Closest that I’ve read to what I consider a ‘real’ classic would be Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” (I cried buckets reading this one) and that was only because it was required reading in a short course I took in English Literature. There are so many movies made from classic books anyway, so why bother reading the actual book, right? WRONG!

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is an excellent read. It has suspense, mystery and action which I feel is better and nothing like the movie/TV versions that I’ve seen. On screen, the story is normally told from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’s point of view but in the book the story is mostly narrated by Mr Utterson, a lawyer and a close friend of Dr Jekyll; as well as a narration from Dr Jekyll himself in the last chapter (the best part of the book really).

The book is only 88 pages long (although I read somewhere that the original book is about 200 pages or so... can someone confirm this?). It took me only one day to read this. Unlike the movies, the mystery revolving the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde is not given proper explanation until the last 20 or so pages of the book which only fuelled my suspense further. Despite knowing what the story was about, I was still consumed with the mystery of Jekyll and Hyde that puzzled Utterson and the revelation at the end of the book was worth the wait and gave the ending an absolute kick!

Robert Louis Stevenson’s style of writing is excellent. The character and plot development is great and I imagine would be hard to capture on screen word for word. Absolutely fantastic and would recommend the book over any of the movie versions any day!

Somehow this has taught me the meaning of the quote “Never judge a book by its movie” . Hmmm... Lots to catch up on, what next... Dracula? The Three Musketeers? A Tale of Two Cities?... Alamak! Banyaknya nak baca.