Bram Stoker, Lady Athlyne (Book Review‪)‬

Bram Stoker, Lady Athlyne. Annotated and Introduced by Carol Senf. Southend-on Sea, Essex: Desert Island Books, 2007. 240 pages. GBP 16.99; William Hughes, Brain Stoker's Dracula: A Reader's Guide. London: Continuum, 2009. 150 pages. GBP 42.50 HB, 12.99 PB. What do the films Bullitt (dir. Peter Yates; 1968), The French Connection (dir. William Friedkin; 1971), Smokey and the Bandit (dir. Hal Needham; 1977), The Blues Brothers (dir. John Landis; 1980), The Cannonball Run (dir. Hal Needham; 1981), The Bourne Identity (dir. Doug Liman; 2002), Death Proof (dir. Quentin Tarantino; 2007), and Bram Stoker's largely unread, almost totally forgotten 1908 novel Lady Athlyne, have in common? The superficial answer is that each one revolves around what has come to be known as the 'car chase/race', where cars speed dangerously over difficult ground, either to get to a particular place by a particular time, or in pursuit of another technological propellant. In Bullitt the terrain is the famously bumpy streets of San Francisco; the Blues Brothers have to drive through a shopping mall; in Lady Athlyne the car race against time takes place on the (superficially) rather less treacherous stretch between Ambleside in the Lake District, and Carsphairn in Scotland. Stoker's novel must count as one of the first instances of such a scene in literature, and it is certainly the best part of this often tiresome novel. The heroine, Joy Ogilvie, has been enjoying a rather dangerous liaison with Lord Athlyne without the permission of her father, and has only three hours to cover the hundred miles back to the hotel where her parents are expected. Should she fail to get there in time, her reputation could be in jeopardy, and her already enraged father will have another reason to hate her paramour. Joy has to make this journey alone because Lord Athlyne has unfortunately been arrested for speeding; under pressure for time, in an unknown country, and with a thick fog all around, Joy crashes and fails to make it back.