Book 15 of 2013: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

After reading South Sea Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson for my course, I decided that I needed to read some more of his stories. It just so happens that I have a free version of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on my Kindle. This was the perfect choice because it gave me the letter S for the Spring Reading Challenge on HTV and it was one of the books on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list which is kind of a personal challenge for myself. Killing two birds with one stone right there.

I do have to admit that part of the reason why I chose this was also because it was one of the shortest S books I had on my Kindle. I was in the mood for a quick read and this ticked that box as well. This was a lovely short read and you could probably get through it in one sitting.

Double Exposure photo of Mr Mansfield who played the title characters in the stage production.
Photo from Wikipedia.

For those of you not familiar with the story of Jekyll and Hyde, it tells the story of a doctor whose experiments lead to the creation of a sort of alter-ego, who is basically all that is bad within him. Gradually he loses control of this alter-ego and it starts to take over; the story is told through the eyes of his friends who observe his change in character and become determined to get to the bottom of it.

The whole way through I kept on thinking that Mr Click would enjoy this book. Last year we both read a book from the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which was a sort of Jekyll and Hyde/Holmes crossover. Obviously I kept on thinking of that while I was reading this, but I also think that this reminded me a little of Conan Doyle. I'm not sure exactly what it was about it, but there was something in the style it was written in. Obviously it was also set around the same time period which probably helped a little.

The writing style also reminded me of Dracula at times. I think that's because of the multiple voices telling the story. I'm quite pleased that I've been reading more classic books recently because I quite like finding parallels between them and looking up which came first and wondering whether they were influenced by other writers of the time. I think this literature course is starting to rub off on me. I think I'd definitely like to read more from this sort of time period.

I'm also planning on reading more by Stevenson, particularly Treasure Island which I used to have in a Children's Classics set when I was younger and started a couple of times but never actually read. It'll definitely be bumped up the list for the future.